The Thing 3: Assimilation
by Obsidian Productions
Summary: After surviving an impossible nightmare at the bottom of the world, Captain Blake finds himself in the company of R. J. MacReady, lone survivor of Outpost 31. Together, they must build an army and fight against Gen Inc. The rogue corporation is looking to exploit The Thing, and in doing so may destroy the entire human race...
1. Chapter 01: Back to Basics

"You said you were at Thirty One."

Blake glanced over. Since the test, neither man had said anything. It had been almost half an hour. He'd been dozing. After all the hell he'd been through, all the horror and screaming and blood and death, it had felt good to just...sit the fuck down for more than thirty seconds.

"I was, it was why I was called in," Blake replied, trying to clear some of the fog from his mind. He wanted to sleep for days.

"Did you find any bodies?" MacReady asked. He continued to stare out over the vast antarctic wastelands, his eyes hidden behind his big blue shades.

"Yeah, a few. Only one intact."

"Black? Bald? Big guy?"

"Yeah. Nametag said Childs."

MacReady sighed heavily. "Damn. He was dead?"

"Yes."

"You test him?"

"No, we didn't even know about testing back then and...besides, I haven't gotten into the habit of testing dead bodies."

"Yeah, fair enough. Damn." A moment of silence passed.

"So what happened to you? How the fuck did you get from Outpost Thirty One to here?"

"You go first."

Blake figured it was fair enough. So, he spent the next ten minutes giving a truncated version of his bloody campaign across Antarctica and his struggle against Whitley and the Thing. All the people that had died, the rebellion against Gen Inc.

When it was over, MacReady told his own story.

"This all started with some Norwegians. Two of them showed up in a chopper, shooting at a dog. They ended up getting killed and we got the dog. Turned out to be infected. We checked out their outpost, Dronning Maud-"

"I was there, too."

"Nightmare, wasn't it?"

"Yep."

"So...well, long story short, lots of people died. We ended up burning down our base as a result. As far as I knew, Childs was the only other one who made it. We ended up in a half-collapsed shed passing a bottle of booze back and forth. I ended up passing out. Hadn't had more than an hour of sleep in three damned days. When I woke up, he was gone. I went looking for him, couldn't find him. I managed to get one of the tractors working, took it a Russian base. I tried to convince them about what was going on.

"They thought I was nuts but they tried to, you know, take care of me. I was there for about two weeks, trying to get a signal out. I had at least got across to them that my damned outpost had burned down and people were dead. And that's when the men in black showed up. Well, the guys in gasmasks and black combat armor. They attacked the base, took everyone. They were Gen Inc. We were all kidnapped and brought to some huge facility. Gen Inc. worked _fast,_ " MacReady explained.

"Any idea who they are?" Blake asked.

"Not sure. I know they're a corporation into genetics and all sorts of medicine. Also, they've got a fucking standing army of mercs. And they're run by a lunatic. A real rat bastard called Graves. I think he's former military. They kept me there for about two months, running all kinds of tests on me. One day, they had a power failure. I managed to escape. A few test subjects did, too. Thing creatures and people. I gathered some survivors, we broke out, grabbed some guns and snowmobiles and took off. Found an abandoned base and set up shop. Today, I saw an opportunity to grab a chopper, this chopper. I did, flew out to the spacecraft site and found you."

"Jesus," Blake muttered.

"Yeah. That's where we're headed right now. The outpost."

"How many guys you got?" Blake asked.

"Right now there's just eight of us. A good spread, though. Engineers and medics in there. We're trying to get the base up and running right now, running on the down low. Gen Inc. has this whole damned region locked down. They've managed to build a shitload fast," MacReady replied.

"Apparently. What's the plan?"

"Right now? Keep low, gather supplies and information, then hit Gen Inc where it hurts. Ultimately I want to have this continent on fucking lockdown and to take these bastards out," MacReady explained.

"A good plan," Blake said.

MacReady nodded and reached out, grabbing the radio. "This is Wolf Mother to Petrol, come back," he said.

He waited, frowned, then repeated the message.

"What's up?" Blake asked.

"My men aren't responding. Could be the shitty comms tower we were trying to fix or..."

He trailed off, he didn't need to say more. Blake automatically reached down, placing a hand on his pistol. In all the chaos of defeating the gigantic Whitley-Thing, he'd lost everything else. He stared out through the front windshield of the chopper. At first, there was just the whipping gray-white snow that had become so common to Blake just recently. Then, it seemed to clear and he caught sight of the base. It was a simple, dark, inert structure.

It seemed empty.

"Well, it's still there at least," MacReady muttered.

He brought the chopper in for a landing on a flat patch of snow not far from the base. Blake readied himself for whatever may lay ahead. MacReady killed the engine and let the rotors die down, still staring at the base.

"I don't like this," he muttered. "I know you're packing, come on. Let's go. Slowly."

"I'm ready," Blake replied, getting his pistol out.

The two of them got out of the chopper and started making their way through the snowstorm towards the base. Visibility was shit, but Blake could at least tell when the door slammed open and two men raced out. He raised his pistol and opened fire, managing to get two shots off before something hit him in the chest.

He had just enough time to realize what it was when a jolt of electricity hit him hard, throwing him into a cold darkness.

* * *

Blake swam back into consciousness.

He was tempted to just go back to sleep. Exhaustion was creeping in, nearly overwhelming in how powerful it was. Blake fought it. Something was wrong. Something had gone wrong but he wasn't sure what, his thoughts scattered and uncertain. He fought against that lethargy, tried to get back to the surface.

Someone was talking.

He focused on that.

"You gave me quite a run for my money, MacReady, I'll give you that much. You're pretty damned resourceful."

"Go fuck yourself, Graves."

"How colorful."

Blake groaned as a red jag of pain cut through his skull.

"Ah! And it looks like the good Captain Blake is returning as well." Blake opened his eyes, found himself staring at a pair of heavy black boots. He looked up and saw man who'd been speaking. He was tall, easily over six feet, well-built with a shaved head and fierce, frozen blue eyes. It must be, he realized, Graves.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Captain. You know, I wanted to thank you. Both of you, actually, but you in particular. You killed Colonel Whitley. You killed a lot of our men, actually, but you also caused quite a ruckus. When there's chaos about, it's a lot easy to make men disappear. And Whitley..." He shook his head, waved his hand. "He was a lunatic. Worse, he was an asshole. I couldn't kill him, but you and Mac here could."

"What do you want with us?" Blake growled.

"I need test subjects. Always more test subjects. And you should be a very interesting subject, Captain Blake. You've survived a great deal...come on, get him up!"

Blake felt rough hands grab him and yank him up off the floor. He was brought up roughly onto his knees and had a chance to look around the room he was in. It was fairly empty, just a few tables along the walls, several doors, too. There were others on their knees as well. He was shocked to see that he actually recognized several of the men. North, Burrows, Weldon. His original team, they were all here. MacReady was there too, as well as two more men.

Two more...

That meant that two were missing. Or it was possible that they'd been killed beforehand. But maybe they were somewhere loose. There were also about half a dozen tough guys in white camo gear with gasmasks and machine guns.

"Unfortunately, you men have caught me in quite a bad mood. Despite how impressed I am by your tenacity and resourcefulness, I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill one of you." Graves turned and pulled out his pistol. He frowned, studying them slowly. He suddenly extended the pistol, placing the barrel against North's forehead. The man stared up at him, silent, his face set in an expression of grim determination.

"No, no..." he muttered, pulling the pistol back.

Instead, he turned and pointed it at one of the men Blake didn't recognize. He didn't hesitate to pull the trigger. There was a brilliant flash and an explosion of sound and the man's head snapped back in a spray of blood.

"You son of a bitch!" MacReady screamed.

"Sorry, Mac. Those of the breaks. I think I may just execute another, I'm feeling particularly vengeful today."

"What about your fucking test subjects?" Blake asked, trying to buy time, trying to bring his body back online. A lot of him hurt.

"We've been rounding up the Special Forces teams Whitley ordered up and, of course, a fair amount of our former employees decided to rebel...I think I can spare one more."

As he aimed at the second man Blake didn't recognize, suddenly, a spray of machine gun fire cut through the room. One of the shots caught Graves in the chest, though Blake didn't see any blood so the bastard must've had on bulletproof armor. One of his soldiers, however, screamed and canted forward and another grunted in pain.

"Who the fuck-" Graves began.

Suddenly, a loud, horrifically familiar shriek filled the air. Blake's eyes shot to the still form of the soldier who had taken a shot through the neck, he was now vibrating violently, as though caught in a grand mal seizure.

"He's infected, burn him!" Graves roared.

Before that could happen, a tentacle tipped with barbed fingers shot out of his back and wrapped around another soldier's head. The man began screaming and beating against the tentacle. At the same time, another one of the soldiers had dropped his gun and was now proceeding to burst out as well. His gasmask fell away, as well as most of the skin on his face, revealing a twisting, bloody mass of muscle and meat.

"Fall back! Fall back!" Graves was screaming.

There was more gunfire now. MacReady and the others had shot to their feet, taking advantage of the confusion. Someone had managed to get hold of a flamethrower and set alight the soldier on the floor who was turning and the man who it had gotten hold of. Blake shook off the hands that had held him and stumbled to his feet, away from the fire. So much was happening, he was having a hard time trying to figure it out.

"Blake! Come on!" a familiar voice shouted.

Burrows, the middle-aged engineer he'd first investigated Outpost Thirty One with, had a pistol in hand and was racing towards him. With no alternative, he followed the man through one of the doors at the back of the room, through a cluttered storeroom, where Burrows paused to grab something and then they kept running through another door at the back, which led to a descending stairwell. Blake ran after him, down into the darkness.


	2. Chapter 02: Down Among the Dead Men

The stairwell led into another, larger storeroom, also packed with all sorts of crap. Neither man spoke as they ran through towers of crates and shelves and lockers. Overhead, a fierce firefight was in play and they could hear the faint sounds of screaming. For now, Blake just wanted to put some distance between him and the bursting out Thing beasts. He felt naked without a flamethrower. He didn't even have his pistol anymore. As he walked through the storeroom, he patted himself down and found that he had _nothing_.

Not even a bullet to his name.

"Burrows, where are we?" he asked as they reached the end of the underground storage area.

"We're about to enter a network of tunnels that Gen Inc set up over the past month. They lead all over the region and they were supposed to take the weather problems out of the equation of moving troops, equipment and specimens," Burrows replied.

"Supposed to?"

"Yeah. They lost control of most of the tunnels. There's tons of Thing creatures down here," Burrows replied. He stopped as they came to another door, turned to face Blake, who stopped and took a step back.

"I'm not infected," Burrows said.

"You know that statement is basically a waste of breath, right?"

Burrows sighed. "Yeah, it is. Sorry, force of habit. I, uh...well, let's just say that, where I grew up, a man was his word, and I worked hard on making sure I could be trusted by my word. Kind of tough to make the adjustment. Here."

He set his pistol down on a nearby barrel. Blake realized the thing he'd snagged on the way out was a flamethrower.

"Maybe I should have the flamethrower," Blake said. "I mean, I've had more combat training and experience."

Burrows stared at him for a moment, then he sighed. "All right, look, I'll give it to you on one condition. I've got _one_ test kit on me. You use it, and pass, you get the flamethrower."

"Fine."

He pulled out a test kit from his pocket and set it down next to the pistol. Blake reached out and picked it up, noting that Burrows was covering him with the flamethrower. He did the test as quick as he could. When there was no reaction, Burrows sighed softly, then reached out, grabbed the pistol and replaced it with the flamethrower.

"Fair enough," Burrows said.

"Thanks," Blake replied. "So...what happened to you?"

Burrows nodded towards the door. They moved over to it and opened it up. Beyond it was a huge, open space, a tunnel, Blake realized. It reminded him, as he stepped cautiously out into it, of the tunnel he'd been in earlier, the one that ended in a giant Thing beast and a bomb. He hoped this one turned out a bit better. Overhead and off in the distance, there were a few working lights, most of them were flickering. From what he could see, the tunnel was choked with debris, abandoned vehicles, crates and dead bodies.

"Jesus," Blake muttered.

"Come on," Burrows said, leading him away, off to the right, sticking close to the wall. "After we got dropped off back at Carpenter Station, we stuck around for awhile. Then Whitley sent us out again, gave us another Captain. We ended up getting attacked as soon as we arrived at the other outpost. Knocked us all out with tranq darts. We woke up in holding cells, where they held us until Mac led his breakout. Managed to find North and Weldon again. Dunno what happened to the Captain. What about you? You kill Whitley?"

"It's a long story," Blake replied. "But yeah, MacReady and I did. Whitley burst out, he infected himself like a goddamned moron. Lost a lot of good men hunting that bastard, but in the end, we got him. Now it looks like we've got someone else to kill."

"Yeah, Graves...he's a real bastard."

They passed in between a huge pair of crates and something in the distance let out a loud roar. The sound came echoing down to them. The two men froze in the dim lighting.

"Where are we going?" Blake asked finally, his voice lowered.

"Mac likes to think ahead. He knew something like this might happen, so he sent us scouting into the tunnels for a secondary outpost. Basically a fall-back base. We found a decent place underground and had been doing our best to repair it. Unfortunately, all we could spare was a skeleton crew. At the moment, there should just be one guy there, Peltola. Anyway, it's a little ways from here, but we should be able to make it there."

"Sounds like fun," Blake muttered. He continued studying his surroundings as they came out from in between the two shipping container-sized crates. There was a more open area now, though it had a perimeter to it. Besides the two walls on either side of them, there was a snarl of two wrecked dump trucks behind him and, ahead of him, another huge crate with other, smaller crates around it. Some of the nearby wall was scorched and blackened.

"I can't believe they built all of this in a few months," he said.

"Yeah, Gen Inc works fast and efficient. I think some of this may have been here already, maybe part of some older project that was abandoned, maybe for the same purpose, of moving things underground because of the weather, but based on the facility me and the others were imprisoned at, I'd say that Gen Inc works crazy fast."

"We've got to stop them," Blake replied.

Burrows nodded. "That we do."

As they made for the mess of crates ahead of them, looking to navigate around them, a hissing rattle suddenly made them both freeze up. Blake was intimately familiar with the sound. How many times had he heard it, or something like, it, during the past few days? It was a Scuttler. Worse, he saw as he scanned the area ahead of him, it was more than one Scuttler. One of them crawled out from beneath a pair of crates that were smashed against each other, forming a small, shadowed niche. Then another one leaped down from the larger crate, and two more followed it, and then another three came from elsewhere.

"Burrows, you've got the pistol, take them out," Blake said as he took a step back, readying the flamethrower in case any of them got close.

Burrows responded with action instead of words. He took aim on the one nearest to them, a two-legged head with with a grim, twisted face wrapped in dead, ashen gray skin, and opened fire. The first bullet took it in the eye and the beast released a high-pitched shriek. Burrows fired again and this time the bullet hit its forehead and tore away a good portion of the skull. It flew back a few feet and remained down.

The engineer started working through the others. Blake counted off the bullets, knowing the pistol, provided it was fully loaded, came with twenty of them. The second Scuttler went down, then another, and a fourth. Burrows was doing well, but they were still advancing. When it looked like two of them were getting ready to leap, Blake stepped forward, aimed and let loose with the flamethrower. Both of them went up like dry kindling, offering up shrieks of furious, alien pain. Both he and Burrows backed away from them.

They made it a few steps further, looking like they were going to try and take a leap again, and then their little bodies gave up the ghost and they collapsed into burning, smoking heaps on the concrete floor.

Burrows finished off the survivors after slamming a fresh magazine into the pistol.

"My last one," he said morosely.

"Don't suppose you have any more fuel canisters?" Blake asked.

"No."

He sighed and shook the flamethrower lightly, judging that there was maybe half a canister left. Not exactly inspiring.

"How far is this place?" Blake asked as they set off again. "And _where_ is this place?"

"It's about another hundred meters down this main tunnel. It's in the left side, marked Security Checkpoint Four B."

"All right. Well, the sooner we get going, the better. I fucking hate this place."

"Me too."

They set off again, heading to the far left side of the battered crates. He prepared himself for more surprises, but no Scuttlers jumped out at him or Burrows as they stuffed themselves between the tunnel wall and the shipping container. They squeezed out the other side and found themselves in a relatively open space. Blake tried to take stock of himself, tried to gauge how much further he could go. Right now, he felt like dogshit. Most of his muscles were sore, aching and crying out for a break. He'd been going almost nonstop for how long now? It couldn't have been more than a day and half, but it felt like weeks.

He was also starving. What had been his last meal? He thought it must have been that food he'd eaten in a forgotten break room with a handful of other men, a temporary eye in the storm that was his campaign against the Thing and the men who planned to profit from it. He was thirsty, he needed to take a leak pretty bad and, probably worst of all, he was flat-out fucking _exhausted_. He'd been knocked out a few times so far, (which seemed like a death sentence in a place like this, but he was still going), but that wasn't the same.

He needed sleep. Honest to god sleep. Was that so much to ask? It did seem kind of unrealistic given the nature of the Thing. But he knew he couldn't keep going like this for much longer. He needed food, sleep, fuel for his body, otherwise he was either going to straight-up pass out or make a crucial mistake.

As he was thinking this, he and Burrows had come into a maze-like section of smashed crates and wrecked vehicles. Seeing as he had the flamethrower, he was leading the way. And then he did exactly what he was worried about.

He made a mistake.

He should have heard the huffing breath, should have noticed the way the crate shifted ahead of him, should have heard the plodding footfalls. He did...but not quick enough. Burrows however, did. As one of the Thing beasts, what Williams had called a Walker, stepped out from behind one of the crates, he simply stared at it, dumbfounded. It was another example of hideous construction, of twisted flesh and bony protrusions.

It was easily seven feet tall, its flesh the color of gray ash. It had one long arm that ended in a spike and another, stunted, short arm that ended in a huge crimson pincer. Its face was a twisted caricature, with one huge, black eye and a slash for a mouth stuffed with blood-smeared teeth. It let out a horrid shriek and came for Blake.

Burrows reacted, grabbing him from behind and pulling him to the left, shoving him hard. Blake grunted as he stumbled and went crashing to the floor of the tunnel. He heard Burrows scream and looked up in shocked horror as the Walker buried its longer arm in Burrows' stomach. His guts exploded out of his back in a foamy spray of blood, loops of steaming intestines hung on the Thing beast's spiked arm.

Blake let out an inarticulate scream of pain and fury and misery as he raised the flamethrower from where he lay and squeezed the trigger, lighting up the Thing beast. He saw, at the last second before he prepared to turn the flamethrower on Burrows, the man raise the pistol he was still holding to his head and pull the trigger. It was a grim, horrible, wretched sight...but now he would be spared the pain of infection and the flamethrower death he was about to face down. Blake turned the flamethrower's black muzzle onto the engineer and torched him.

Once he was sure they were both burning, he quickly regained his feet and backed away, making sure they were dead. With that grizzly task completed, as he felt an agonizing guilt start to settle in, Blake turned and began making his way towards the secondary outpost, trying not to think about anything but survival. He could collapse into a heap of guilt and fury later, not now, not yet. He kept walking, keeping a sharp eye out for more Things.

But he encountered nothing and no one by the time he reached the door that Burrows had indicated. It was a battered but intact steel door beneath a sign, painted in flat black, broad lettering: **SECURITY CHECKPOINT 4B**. It was there, all right. Now just to see if anyone else had made it. Blake tried the door.

It opened up easily enough. Probably not the best of signs. He stepped slowly into a dim room. As he began checking the corners, something slammed into the side of his head and knocked him right back into unconsciousness.


	3. Chapter 03: A Moment's Peace

For the second time that day, Blake swam back to consciousness.

Only this time, he was speared by a harpoon and jerked back. Someone stuck something sharp and painful in his bicep and he heard voices.

"Fuck off!" he snapped incoherently as the needle was extracted.

"Easy now," said a familiar voice. "Sorry about that, pal...okay, looks like he's not infected. Blake...can you hear me?"

Blake groaned and opened his eyes. He was lying on his back and several faces were staring down at him. He recognized MacReady, Weldon and North, though he didn't recognize the final man. He was a very pale man with short, dark hair and a cleanly shaved face. He looked cautious and wary, a deep frown etching lines into his face.

"What the fuck happened?" Blake groaned.

"Peltola here whacked you a good one," MacReady replied, indicating the new man. "We weren't sure who was coming into our base and Peltola's a little jumpy."

"Thanks," Blake muttered.

"Hey, I've been here by myself for about a day," Peltola replied.

"You're the last one to show up. You've been out for about half an hour. In all the chaos, I lost track of most people but, between us, we've been able to figure out that you and Burrows were the only ones left missing. What happened to him? We haven't heard anything from him."

Blake sighed, shook his head. "He didn't make it." The first thing he felt besides a tremendous pain in his head was sharp-edged guilt. "I fucked up. I wasn't paying attention, too damned tired from no sleep and no food..."

MacReady frowned. "I'm sorry that happened...damn, he and Peltola were our only engineers...all right, Blake, pay attention."

As he said this, Blake became more alert, again remembering the omnipresent threat of infection. He knew that they had tested him just now, and he hadn't been infected, so that was a big plus. But what about them?

MacReady seemed to read his mind. He held up a test kit. "Now, I've tested everyone else in this room. I'm going to test myself right now for you, so that you can trust me. Does that make sense?" he asked.

Blake nodded slowly, then grimaced, more pain shooting through his skull. He remained sitting, watching as MacReady tested himself. It came out negative. Blake relaxed.

"Now what?" North asked as MacReady tossed the kit away and offered Blake a helping hand.

"Well, we've got a lot to do," MacReady replied. "Blake-"

Once he was standing, Blake held up both of his hands in a defensive gesture. "MacReady, whatever it is, I can't do it. I'm dead on my feet. You know I'm Special Forces, so you know I'm not just bitching. I know my limits. I've reached them. I need a meal, a big one, and sleep. Not a nap, real, honest to god sleep, and a shower and change of clothes if you can manage it."

MacReady stared at him for a long moment. He'd lost his sunglasses and his huge, weirdly out of place sombrero. It made him look more human. Finally, he nodded. "Okay, I hear you. I'll show you around, get you situated. Peltola, go look at that generator. North, make sure this place is locked down. Weldon, start inventorying the medical supplies."

The three men snapped off crisp affirmative responses and split up. Blake looked around. The room he'd come into was a basic entryway, just a table and a few boxes along the walls. Besides the one he'd come in through, there were three doors, one in each wall.

"This is the fall-back base. Right now we're calling it Outpost Bravo. Down there," he pointed down the left-hand doorway, "is the generator room and the medical bay. Dead ahead is the mess and, well, what passes for living quarters. To the right is our makeshift armory and a comms room. And that's it. Peltola's been here for the past three days, making it inhabitable. I sent him ahead once we discovered this during a scouting mission in the tunnels. I've been sending the others over from time to time to help. Come on."

They walked through the door at the head of the room and into a corridor. MacReady gave him a quick tour. "Here's the mess," he said, showing him to medium sized room taken up mostly by tables and chairs. At the back of the room, what Blake realized at once was a break room, were some cabinets and counters, a sink, a microwave and a mini-fridge. There were a pair of crates on the counter, one contained bottles of water, the other contained cans of food.

"Everyone prepares their own meals," MacReady said firmly. "Best that way."

"Makes sense. And we should only eat out of cans, I imagine," Blake replied.

MacReady nodded, then frowned.

"What?" Blake asked.

MacReady shook his head. "Nothing, just...a friend of mine came to the same conclusion, back Outpost Thirty One. Fuchs was his name...come on."

He showed Blake to one of three small rooms that had clearly been converted from storage rooms. They each held a stack of crates and a makeshift bed. In one case it was a mattress on the floor, the other two held cots.

"Everyone locks the doors when they go in to sleep. Now, finally, you'll like this."

There were two rooms at the end of the hall. One was a simple bathroom with a toilet, a sink and a urinal. The other was a shower room with two stalls.

"Hot water and everything," MacReady said with a grin. Blake spied bars of soap, razors, shaving cream and towels. "Now, as for clothes, uh, I think some of the boxes in there had cold weather gear in them, so I'm afraid you'll have to help yourself. I need to go help North batten down the hatches, as it were," he said.

"Fine by me. And thanks."

MacReady offered him a grim smile. "Don't thank me yet, I'm going to need your particular skill-set over the next few days, or weeks, or however long this takes. Once we start, we really won't be stopping and I doubt all of us will come out alive."

"Yeah," Blake replied.

"Get some food and rest, I'll give you as much time as I can."

"Thanks."

MacReady turned and left. Blake stood there in the corridor for a long moment, wondering what to do first. His stomach decided for him. He needed to eat before he did anything else. Blake made his way back to the mess and moved around the tables and chairs to where the food was. He spent five minutes searching through the fridge and cabinets, but there really wasn't anything left. At least nothing that he trusted.

Sighing in resignation, he grabbed two bottles of water, a can opener, a can of black beans, a can of diced pears and a can of corned beef hash. He preferred it cooked but that just wasn't an option. Sitting down, he opened the cans and ate them mechanically, pausing to drink from the two water bottles. He'd spent enough time in his life eating not for taste, but for the simple fact that his body needed fuel. The food wasn't awful, just not the way he liked it. He didn't think about much as he worked his way through the meal, getting through the beans first, then the fruit and finally the corned beef hash. At least it had a pretty good taste to it.

He finished the cans and the bottles of water off, threw away the remains in a large, barrel-like trash can and replaced the can opener. His next stop was going to be to find some clothes, but then, at all once, it hit him that he was unarmed.

So that became his top priority.

He retraced his steps back into the antechamber and headed down the appropriate corridor, the one that had the armory. It was easy enough to find, and examining it made him more than a little worried. He recognized the flamethrower he'd gotten from Burrows. It and three little blowtorches were all they had in the form of flame-based weaponry. Not good. Besides that, there were a handful of pistols, an MP-5 and two shotguns, then a few boxes that contained some, but not a whole lot, of ammo for all the weapons.

Blake ended up taking a blowtorch, because there was no way he was sleeping without a weapon. After making sure that it was full up on fuel, he left the armory and made his way back to the living quarters. He selected the one that had a mattress in it, even if it was on the floor it looked more comfortable than either of the two cots. Coming inside, he found a box marked _Cold Weather Gear_ , set down the blowtorch and began his search. A part of him felt a little guilty for taking the mattress, because he, like most other soldiers, had learned to sleep goddamn near anywhere. But most other soldiers hadn't been through what he had over the past few days. If he was going to survive this mess, he needed real sleep.

The search of the box turned up a fresh coat, an undershirt, long-johns, boxers, socks, (two pairs), big ass boots, a heavy set of leggings, an overshirt and a coat. All of it would be needed to survive the hell of Antarctica's weather. He left most of it in a pile by the bed, taking only the socks, boxers, undershirt and long-johns into the shower area with him. Before he took a shower, he relieved himself in the bathroom, then came back to the shower area, closed the door and began stripping down. It was a huge relief.

He'd been on missions where he was stuck in the same outfit for days at a time, sometimes up to a week, depending on how bad the situation was, and nothing in his whole life seemed to feel quite as satisfying as peeling it all off at the end. Soon, he stood naked before a mirror, staring at himself. He was bruised and a bit battered, but he had no cuts, no open wounds besides the puncture wounds he'd endured proving his humanity.

Satisfied that he was healthy enough for now, Blake hurried over to the nearest shower stall, got in and turned the water up as hot as he could stand it. He almost passed out. It was like heaven after all the hell he'd been through. All he was missing was a beautiful woman and a beer. But for now he'd settle for getting clean and some decent sleep. After about five minutes of just soaking in the hot water, he grabbed a bar of soap and cleaned up. When that was over, he was reluctant to leave the shower, but ultimately made himself.

No telling how big a water supply they had.

He dried off and dressed, then headed back to the room he'd chosen for himself. The mattress looked like the most inviting thing in the whole fucking world right now. He closed the door, locked it and then moved to turn off the light...but he couldn't make himself do it. As much as he felt like a grown-ass man, a soldier no less, in the fucking Special Forces...he couldn't make himself sleep in the dark. Not after what he had endured.

Sighing, on the edge of passing out from exhaustion now, Blake searched the crates until he came up with what he needed: a battery powered lantern. Feeling more than a little embarrassed, he turned it on, then killed the lights. The room became saturated in gloom, but he could see. Sighing softly, he set the lantern and the blowtorch beside him on the floor, then laid down, covered himself up and faced the wall.

He was asleep within seconds.


	4. Chapter 04: Salvage

Blake gasped awake.

For a moment, just a moment, he had no idea where he was. He was faintly cold and sticky, he'd sweat a great deal during the night, he was not just sticky but practically soaked. He pulled the blankets away from him and sat up, looking around a small concrete room cramped with an untidy stack of opened and unopened boxes along the opposite wall. The only light came from an electric lantern on the floor beside the mattress he slept on.

All at once, it came back to him and Blake let out a heavy sigh and rubbed at his eyes. He couldn't remember if he'd had any nightmares while he'd slept, but he sure felt shitty enough. The positive of all this was that he no longer felt bone-deep weary. He must've slept for quite a while. That made him suddenly paranoid. What if something had happened to him in his sleep? Or the base? What if he was the last survivor?

Blake tried to make himself calm down. First things first: a test. Just to be sure. But how? He doubted there were any kits around...he thought about it for a moment, then came up with a quick idea. What was happening in those test kits? Blood was being exposed to a chemical. But a chemical wasn't the only way to get a response. Fire would do just fine. He got up and spent a few moments searching through the boxes.

He ended up coming up with a few useful tools: a scalpel and a lighter. He took a moment to give himself a little cut on his fingertip, squeezed out a few drops of blood onto the floor, then he hit the lighter and applied the flame to the blood. Nothing happened. He let out a small sigh of relief, then found some gauze from the same kit he'd discovered the scalpel in and held it against his cut. Slowly, Blake stood up and stretched.

Various joints popped and he realized he was starving again, and thirsty. How long had he been out? Before he figured that out, he needed another shower. He reeked. Blake gathered up his cold weather gear, some fresh under clothes and his blowtorch, then unlocked the door and stepped out into the door beyond. He listened for a moment and heard MacReady and North talking about something. Everything was probably fine. Probably.

He took another shower and dressed, this time putting on all the gear, including the coat because it was getting cold in here and he was likely going back outside. After that, he made another trip to the mess hall, scarfing down two cans of beans, a can of peaches and some canned beef, then two bottles of water. Once that was done, he started feeling human again. Which sucked, since he was getting ready to go volunteer for whatever job needed to be done. Heading back out into that cold or the darkness of the tunnels...

He wasn't looking forward to it.

But it needed to be done.

As he stepped out of the mess hall and made his way back to the central room, he ran into MacReady, North and Weldon.

"Blake, just in time. You've been out for about thirteen hours," MacReady said.

"Holy shit...sorry. I didn't know I was down for so long."

"It's fine, after everything you've been through, I figured you were right, you needed real sleep. But you're just in time for our test. We do one every two hours. Peltola! Get in here, testing time!" MacReady called.

The frowning engineer appeared from the corridor that led to the generator room. "Let's get this over with," he muttered.

MacReady held out a scalpel and a blowtorch. As Blake had just done, he cut his fingertip, let some drip onto a nearby table, then touched the tip of the blowtorch, which was steaming hot, to the blood. A little puff of smoke escaped and nothing more. MacReady did this for each of them, and each of them passed.

"Good," he said. "Now, to business. I'm calling a meeting. Peltola, you've been compiling a list of all the shit we need for our new base here. What's it say?"

Peltola sighed and ran his hands through his short black hair. His eyes were bloodshot and baggy. He looked harried and hassled. "Well, public enemy number one right now is the fucking generator. Notice it's getting colder in here? Our generator is on its last leg and I can only run about half the heating elements. I'd say unless we get some spare parts, we've got maybe half a day before it craps out for good and we freeze in the dark."

"Okay, what else?" MacReady asked.

"The radio. There's an antenna up top but it took some damage. I can repair it but again, I need parts. Those are the two biggies, at least in terms of shit I need. But there's a lot more, obviously. We need food, water, guns, ammo, medical supplies, lots of shit."

MacReady was nodding. "Okay, that makes sense. There's that map we found of the immediate area. Blake, you'll have to take a look at it. We've been raiding supply areas for the past few days. North and Weldon did a raid while you were asleep. There's another area that might have a good cache of stuff. It's an underground warehouse, bout a hundred meters further on down the tunnel. Right now, its our best bet for those spare parts. The only problem is...well, our numbers are dwindling. And Peltola is our only engineer. So, unfortunately, that means I'm going to have to send the two of you out there alone."

"Seriously?" Peltola asked.

"I'm afraid so. We can't leave the base undefended. I know it's a gamble, that's why I'll be giving you our only flamethrower and some other supplies. We _need_ those generator parts," MacReady replied.

"Fine," Peltola said with a sigh.

"Blake, you and Peltola head to the armory. There's a map in there you can take with you and a handheld radio. We all have one, you'll need one too. It's not the greatest thing, especially underground, but it should work at least somewhat. Try not to take too long."

"Got it," Blake replied.

He and Peltola headed down the hallway that led to the armory. Once inside, Blake spent a few minutes appropriating his gear. It felt good to get back into it. He pocketed the radio, looked over the map for a minute, then folded it and pocketed it as well. Following it went a flashlight and some batteries, the MP-5 and two magazines of ammo and he traded his blowtorch for a flamethrower that had been topped off with fuel.

He considered taking more, and ultimately did end up pocketing one of the few remaining fuel canisters, then left the room. Peltola only grabbed a pistol and several magazines for it. The man probably wasn't too keen on firearms, so maybe it was for the best.

"Let's go," Peltola grumbled.

They headed out of the base, the others wishing them luck.

* * *

The tunnel was just as dim and intimidating as before. Well, maybe not that intimidating, now that he'd eaten, showered and slept. He felt more focused, more awake, more capable. Ready to take on the challenge, and he'd been through far worse than this over the past few days. The flamethrower felt good in his hands as he surveyed the section of tunnel before him. The area was fairly open, though beset on both sides by debris from whatever war had ravaged the area.

"Come on," Blake said, striking off.

Peltola followed him silently into the devastated, subterranean gloom. The two men moved deeper into the tunnel, into the dark unknown. Blake studied his environment carefully as they moved away from the base. So far, the concrete tunnel seemed to be filled mostly with crates of varying sizes, wrecked vehicles and partially collapsed sections of wall and ceiling. And bodies, of course. There were lots of bodies.

Whatever cataclysm had occurred here must have been something to behold. Blake wondered how Gen Inc could have let the situation get this out of hand, but, then again, when you were dealing with an enemy like the Thing, all bets were off. With the flamethrower set firmly in his grasp, Blake led the way through a small maze of smashed crates. He stepped carefully over a burned corpse as he moved down a narrow alcove between the two metallic crates. For the moment, he could hear nothing in the tunnel but their own movements.

He kept going.

"So," he said, quietly, after a few minutes more, "Peltola, how do you figure into this?"

"What do you mean?" the engineer replied just as quietly.

"What are you doing down here, in Antarctica? How'd you end up here?"

"I'm a former Gen Inc employee. I don't know how much you heard, but I was part of an underground movement, mainly of engineers and medics, that formed to stop what Gen Inc and Whitley were doing once we learned the truth. It all went to hell but we at least did some damage. I was at Strata Station, a support area next to an airfield. I barely made it out of there before it blew, then I got captured by the black ops guys. Mac broke me out," Peltola replied.

"Shit, I was there when that happened, made it out by the skin of my ass. Whitley set that bomb in the underground portion, or had someone set it," Blake said. "And yeah, I met a few people from the underground movement. Temple. Lavelle. Powell. Reed."

"Any of 'em make it?"

Blake shook his head. "As far as I know, with the exception of North and Weldon, everyone I ran into during my first campaign against Whitley are dead."

Peltola grunted in response. They kept going, moving around a huge, flipped over dump truck. Up ahead was another open area, this one was at least decently well-lit. There didn't seem to be anything waiting for them, and the large, partially open entryway off to the right marked their point of ingress. "There," Blake said, pointing.

"Let's get this over with," Peltola muttered.

They crossed the distance and approached the door. Blake peered in through the opening. The door was one of those high-tech rigs that split down the middle and slid into the walls. It was partially open, revealing a dimly-lit, vast space beyond. At first glance, it resembled a warehouse. It reminded him a lot of the place he'd met Collins in, right after losing Pierce. Not something he wanted to be thinking about right now.

"Looks clear," he muttered.

"It always does," Peltola replied morosely.

They headed inside, Blake letting the black muzzle of his flamethrower lead the way. The area beyond the door was a wide open space boarded by crates. Ramps of corrugated metal led up to a catwalk ringing the interior of the room, creating an impromptu second story. Only a few lights were still on overhead, hanging high in the ceiling, looking like distant stars. Blake took a few steps deeper inside, motioning for Peltola to stay back.

He heard heavy footfalls somewhere nearby.

Multiple sets of them. Walkers.

Blake moved to the middle of the open space, suddenly feeling like he was in an arena. He listened intently, trying to figure out where they were. He had just determined that one was to his right when one of the hideous, deformed things stepped out from the shadows. It was a six and a half foot beast, the same model as the very first Walker he'd encountered when clearing the Norwegian base, Dronning Maud, to get Williams' help. It was a godforsaken abomination that sported a split-open dog head with a tube sticking up out of it, ending in snapping jaws. Its thin, bent pole legs began dragging it forward and its big, split-limbed arms reached for Blake. Probably the most disturbing feature of all was the human torso growing out of its back, almost like a tail, being dragged along the floor. Blake broke through his terror and raised his flamethrower.

He squeezed the trigger.

A hot jet of flame shot from the muzzle, crossed the distance between them and lit the thing up like a torch in seconds. Blake took several steps back as it came closer to him...and he almost backed right into a second Walker.

"Blake! Behind you!" Peltola called out, then opened fire.

Blake spun around, backpedaling away from both of them now, as he spied a thing made of sickly pale, leathery flesh. Both of its arms ended in huge crab claws, one of them inexplicably blue, the other a deep, bloody red. Bullet holes were opening up on it, sprays of black gore jetting from its awful pallid flesh. Blake raised the flamethrower and lit the fucker up. The beast began shrieking and ran straight for him.

It wasn't going down.

Cursing, Blake quickly switched to his MP-5, letting the flamethrower hang, and cut loose, spraying the creature with short, controlled bursts of gunfire. He ended up putting half a magazine into the thing before it stumbled to a halt and collapsed into a smoldering heap on the floor. Blake coughed violently as the smoke hit him.

"Fuck, they reek," he growled as he stepped away, joining Peltola back at the entrance.

"Think it's clear?" the engineer asked.

"Probably. Usually a battle draws the others out of hiding. Now, go find your parts, I'll watch your back," Blake replied.

Peltola grunted in reply and reluctantly entered the warehouse. They spent almost a whole hour poking through the warehouse. There weren't any other rooms to investigate beyond a bathroom that looked like the set of a horror movie and a break room that had been cleared out. There were only a few Scuttlers hiding out that Blake put down without too much trouble. In the end, they managed to find a small cache of medical supplies, a blowtorch and the parts for the generator. Blake loaded it all up in Peltola's backpack.

As they were heading for the exit, Blake's radio spat out a string of static-laced dialogue. Flashing back to investigating Outpost Thirty One and picking up Pierce's distress call, he grabbed the radio and responded. "Repeat your message, over," he said.

There was a pause, then, _"-ho is this? Over."_

"Captain Blake, Special Forces. Identify yourself. Over."

" _-name is Corporal Chase...zzt...at a small structure...zzt...Way Station Thirteen...need help...with Special Forces! Over!"_

"Shit," Blake muttered, pulling out his map and checking it. There was a portion dedicated to showing topside structures. Way Station Thirteen wasn't all that far away. He weighed his options, looking at Peltola, who frowned deeply at him. It could be a trap...or the man could be infected. Or it could be an ally that needed help.

"Get back to the base, I'm going to investigate this."

"Are you crazy?" Peltola replied.

"No, head back. Tell MacReady what happened. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Peltola growled, looking down at the blowtorch in his hand, then sighed explosively. "Fine...good luck."

"You too."

Blake watched Peltola go, then brought his radio once more to his mouth. "I'm on my way to your position. Out."


	5. Chapter 05: Rescue Op

Blake looked into the yawning, dimly-lit void that awaited him.

This was really stupid, but, then again, he'd done a lot of stupid shit over his life. And he'd done a _lot_ of it over the past few days. But he was still alive, still breathing, and if there was another Special Forces solider out there in a similar condition, then he was willing to risk his life on the chance that he could save the man.

The way ahead was a crooked, confused maze of wrecked vehicles and crates. He was already getting sick of this environment. The good news was that the only thing he heard were the last, echoing footsteps of Peltola retreating back to the base. Hoping that he wasn't walking to his doom, Blake set off, walking alongside a massive dump truck. It stood like a monolithic sentinel in the gloom, derelict and dark, windows cracked, blood smeared across the industrial yellow surface of the vehicle, some of it red, some of it black.

As he stalked through the underground gloom, Blake found his mind wandering. He realized, all at once, that he'd become entrenched in this insane war, non-stop, and there was no real end in sight. Blake had fought all over the planet, (now he could say that he'd seen some kind of combat on literally all seven continents now, so...hey, there was that), certainly longer than the few days he'd been down here in the cold.

How long _had_ he been down here?

He realized that he'd lost all sense of the passage of time. For too long, it had only been the objectives. Simple survival, not being infected, pure paranoia and the biting cold. As he carefully slid along a dull blue cargo container, flipped over on its side, he found himself deeply, deeply appreciative to every person who had ever pushed him to go harder, go father, endure just a little bit longer. All of it had led him to start to pushing himself harder, building his own endurance, getting faster, stronger, smarter, simply better.

What better battlefield to test him on than this one?

There were so many factors to consider, so many things trying to kill him. Blake had always enjoyed conflict and struggle. He wasn't sure why. He'd grown up in a shitty little town in Missouri where the population barely broke a thousand. He'd been small and funny looking, so naturally he attracted bullies like iron filings to a magnet. At first, he'd run away. That's where his speed had come from. Then, when puberty hit, he'd began to grow and started working out. He'd done it all his thirteenth summer, doing anything he could to improve his body.

When the bullies came after that, he put them down, fast and hard.

They'd learned their lessons after that.

When he graduated high school and hit eighteen years old, he knew that the fastest, most certain way out was the Army. So he'd signed up and had never really looked back. That was twelve years ago. And those twelve years had been leading to this conflict, easily the most difficult thing he'd ever had to do in his entire life.

Blake realized that he'd come to his destination, at least, the first one. A ladder bolted to the left wall would take him to the surface. Sighing, he slung his flamethrower, placed his hands on the nearest rung and began the long climb up.

It was irritating, but eventually he made it to the top.

Opening a hatch, he poked his head up and looked around. He was inside a small, mostly empty room. Almost at once, he began to hear things: the whispering of the wind, screaming, gunshots. Many different gunshots. Okay, probably human hostiles. He switched to his MP-5, the weapon a solid, reassuring weight in his grasp.

Moving to the only door, Blake opened it and peered out. He found himself staring down a long hallway. There were a few doors to the left, but through an open door at the end he spied the staccato strobe effect of muzzle flash. Moving with as much stealth and speed as he could muster, Blake reached the end of the corridor and peered cautiously through the open door. A trio of men in white camo gear and gasmasks were ducked behind pieces of furniture in what appeared to be a recreational room, firing through an open doorway at the back of the room.

They must be shooting at his new acquaintance.

Blake took the opportunity to line up the barrel of his MP-5 with the back of the head of the nearest gasmask-wearing son of a bitch. He squeezed the trigger. A few shots spat out and splattered the bastard's head all over his buddies. They shouted in surprise and began to retaliate. Blake didn't give them a chance. He brought his barrel first to the left, then to the right, putting each of them down with quick headshots.

This was cake compared to what he'd been putting up with lately.

Silence fell, broken only by the howling of the antarctic winds.

"Who goes there?!" someone finally called out. The voice was familiar.

"Captain Blake! We spoke on the radio," he called back.

"I'm coming out, cease fire."

"Affirmative."

He began to hear footfalls. A moment later, a man in cold weather gear appeared in the doorway. He had a shotgun in his hands and a flamethrower hanging from his shoulder. He regarded Blake warily for a moment.

"So you're Special Forces?" he asked.

"Yep," Blake replied.

"I'm going to have to test you."

"I was going to say the same thing. Do you have any kits?"

"Yeah, I've got some. We're gonna do this carefully. I go first," he said.

Blake switched to his flamethrower. "Ready when you are," he said.

The man nodded tightly, setting his shotgun down carefully and then retrieving a test kit from his backpack. He stuck himself, pulled the trigger and held it up. Blake tensed, expecting the worst, but nothing happened. He let out a breath.

"Your turn."

Blake nodded. The soldier walked carefully across the room, holding his flamethrower now, and set a test kit down on a pool table that one of the Gen Inc troopers had been crouched behind. He then retreated back across the room, moving backwards, never taking his eyes off of Blake. Letting both his weapons hang and keeping his movements careful, Blake moved over to the pool table, took the kit and tested himself.

When nothing happened, the soldier relaxed.

"I'm Chase," he said. "Thanks for the assist."

"I'm more than glad to be able to provide it."

"I'd love to get caught up, but my team isn't far from here. We were holed up at an old American base. It's maybe a quarter mile away. I've lost contact with them and I need to get back there and find out what happened," Chase said.

"All right, let's get on it," Blake replied.

They began to make their way through the Way Station. Blake wondered what a Way Station was. At a glance, it appeared to be simply a support outpost, maybe a place to get in out of the storm, or to make repairs or heal injuries. Whatever it was, it was clearly recent, more than likely built by Gen Inc, and would probably hold supplies.

As they headed outside, they began to talk, kicking their way through the snow, following a series of aquamarine light poles that burned coldly. Blake was unhappy to see that the storm was back with a vengeance.

"So how many are in your team?" Blake asked.

"If they're all still alive, there should be four at the base. I came here with another soldier to search for supplies. What are you doing down here?" Chase replied, raising his voice to be heard over the shrieking winds.

"It's a long story," Blake said. "I was called down by Colonel Whitley to investigate a derelict outpost."

"Same story...that fucker sold our asses to Gen Inc."

"Whitley's dead...I killed him personally. How much do you know about what's going on down here?"

"Bits and pieces."

Blake nodded and proceeded to catch Chase up on the situation at large, filling in as many gaps as he could manage. As Blake finished up, Chase started telling his own story.

"We got called in from the States, flown down and sent to investigate a research outpost that had gone silent, just like you. Only when we got there, we found the creatures. We fought them, but they took down two of my crew, including our Captain. Eventually, I accidentally shot a canister of kerosene and lit one of the big ones on fire. That stopped it. We adapted. We found a flamethrower in the base and torched the fuckers. We tried to call for backup, then for extraction, but the radio wasn't worth shit and the chopper never came back.

"We searched the base, figuring that we might be fucked, and gathered up research notes and supplies, slowly figuring out what the hell was going on. The scientists there had figured out a little bit. We ultimately waited for about sixteen hours before deciding that we were going to have to do this on our own, to try and reestablish contact. We found a tractor and got it working, then took it to the next nearest outpost, which was a Swedish resupply station. It was just as fucked up as the last base was. After that it was just a lot of moving between bases, trying to stay alive, fighting the creatures and attempting contact with Colonel Whitley.

"We ended up running into two other Special Forces teams and what's left is an amalgamation of those teams. It was only recently that we realized what was really going on when we intercepted some radio transmissions from Gen Inc."

Ahead of them, dark shapes slowly appeared out of the snowstorm. The base. He spied a collection small, single-room, single-story structures: supply sheds. There were half a dozen of them, marking the perimeter of the research camp.

"Get ready," Blake said.

Chase nodded, his shotgun firmly in hand. Blake knew that they needed to get inside, and soon. They had spent too much time outside in the cold already. Those shacks were going to have to do. They moved to the edge of the row, passed the nearest shack and came around to the front. Further on ahead and to his right, he saw more structures, but he ignored those for the moment. Opening the door to the first shack, he pointed his MP-5 and flashlight inside. Nothing but boxes and a table with a half-eaten meal on it, frozen solid.

He and Chase entered the building, closing the door and waiting for several moments, getting their breath back. Once they felt capable again, they began searching the sheds. They found something in the final shed at the opposite end of the line.

Blake opened the door, expecting to find the same thing he'd found in the previous five shacks: boxes and tables, sometimes chairs, too. Instead, what he found was the barrel of a shotgun pointed right at his head.

"Don't fucking move," a voice growled.

"Taylor? Don't shoot!" Chase said.

The man on the other end of the shotgun, a short, stocky man with a grim expression, wore a red cross over his chest. A medic.

"Chase...where the fuck have you been?" he asked.

"I was investigating the other base...Johnson didn't make it. We got jumped by Gen Inc."

"Who the fuck is this?" Taylor asked.

"Captain Blake. I'm Special Forces," Blake replied.

"He saved my ass...what _happened?_ " Chase asked.

"Creatures attacked the base, we got scattered and split up. I ended up out here, I don't know what happened to the others..."

As he said this, gunshots suddenly sounded somewhere nearby.

"All right, look, we've got to get the team back together," Blake said. "Keep your distance, we'll test later," he added.

Taylor stared at them for a long moment, then nodded tightly. "Fine."

He left the shack and the three of them began hurrying across the snowbound area, making for the nearest structure, the one to the right. Blake went first, switching to his flamethrower. He hurried up to the nearest door and opened it up. Something roared, the sound carrying out the door as he stepped inside. He came into a small antechamber and swept the area with his gaze. He registered two doorways, a row of lockers, a pile of boots. The gunfire was coming through the doorway to his front and he hurried through.

He burst into a mess hall, searching for a target. A man was being menaced by a Walker, a hideous visage that looked like it had skin of melted wax and a bulbous head. It was slowly approaching the man, who had apparently run out of ammo.

"Get out of there!" Blake called as he raced forward.

The man snapped his gaze to Blake, then threw himself to the side as he realized what was happening. Blake lit the Walker up, hosing it down with flames. The beast began shrieking, whipping around to face him. But it didn't get farther than a few steps before collapsing into a heap. Blake realized that the man had already softened the beast up. A moment passed, then the man, who Blake saw was an engineer, took a cautious step forward.

"Taylor, Chase," he said, "where'd you go, Taylor?"

"I beat a hasty retreat," Taylor growled in reply.

"Look, we can catch up later," Blake said, "where are the other members of your team?"

"Well...I saw Davis and Nolan heading for the dorms building when everything went to hell," the engineer replied. "I'm Fielding."

"Blake. Keep your distance. Once we sweep the area and get to the others, we'll do tests," Blake replied.

Fielding nodded.

Blake led them through the mess hall, down a corridor, past several offices, research labs and storage rooms. They passed through a doorway at the end of the hallway, moved a short distance over to another building. As he came inside, Blake found himself staring down two barrels, another MP-5 and a flamethrower.

"So...everyone's back together," the man wielding the flamethrower said. "Who are you?" he asked, looking at Blake.

"Captain Blake, Special Forces," Blake replied. "I responded to a distress call from Chase."

"I see...well, that makes you the ranking officer...which doesn't really mean shit unless you can prove you aren't infected."

"I know. Is this everyone?" he asked.

"This is the whole team," Chase replied.

"Good. Test kits?" he asked.

Between them, the men had eight. They carefully passed them around, so that every man held one. They all stood careful distances apart.

"I'll go first," Blake said. He tested himself. Nothing happened. Tossing the test kit on the floor, he took a step back and covered them all. "Chase, you next."

He nodded and tested himself. It came back negative. Blake motioned for him to join him on his side of the room.

"Taylor now," Blake said.

The medic grunted and stuck himself. He drew his blood, held it up...and nothing happened. He moved to join Blake and Chase.

"Fielding."

The engineer nodded. He began to raise the kit, then, suddenly, dropped it, wound up like he was going to throw a baseball and flung his arm forward. Blake watched in horror as the man's hand detached from his body and sailed through the air. The flamethrower-wielding soldier let out a startled yell, sidestepping and narrowly avoiding the hand. He spun around, tracking the disembodied hand, and lit the thing up.

As he was doing this, Blake was getting his own flamethrower ready. The thing that was not Fielding was trembling violently now, its skin sloughing off, shrieking madly. It reached for Blake with elongated hands and he squeezed the trigger. A jet of red-orange flame leaped out of the flamethrower's muzzle, attaching to the hideous, transforming Thing creature and began burning it alive. The creature started shrieking even louder, stumbling around, knocking things over. Eventually, it fell to the floor, no longer moving.

Chase put it out with a fire extinguisher to keep the fire from spreading when they were convinced it was thoroughly roasted.

"Well..." Blake said, shaken by the experience, he still never expected it when it happened, "your turn," he said, turning the flamethrower to the man wielding the MP-5. His nametag identified him as a soldier named Davis. He slowly nodded and tested himself. Both Blake and the other man covered him with their flamethrowers.

When the test was negative, Blake had the final man, who wore a red cross on his chest and was named Nolan, test himself.

It came out negative.

Blake let out a long sigh of relief. "Okay," he said, assembling his thoughts, "we've got a lot to talk about and a lot to do. I'm officially drafting all of you into my service. I've got a big, nasty objective and I need all the help I can get."

"What's the objective?" Taylor asked.

"I want to take down Gen Inc and stop the infection from leaving this continent."

The men all looked at each other, each of them slowly nodding.

Nolan fixed him firmly with his gaze. "We're in."


	6. Chapter 06: Communications

At first, MacReady was pissed. The second Blake started trying to talk to him on the radio once he and the other Special Forces survivors got back underground, MacReady began asking him where the fuck he'd been and what the fuck he thought he'd been doing.

Then Blake explained that he'd rescued four certified badasses and they were coming back with a fair amount of loot.

That had really smoothed things over.

After doing the tests and exposing the infected survivor, (Blake grimly lamented that the only engineer had been infected), he'd organized the team and had them scour the facility for supplies. Unfortunately, the Special Forces team had been running low when they had arrived at the abandoned research station, and it seemed that other survivors had already been through the station, so there wasn't much in the way of medical supplies, food reserves or weapons and ammo. Once they'd gotten everything they could, they'd trekked back through the storm to the Way Station. Blake had had them do a cursory scan of the place.

They'd taken the most immediately valuable things they'd found: some medical supplies, a pair of flamethrowers and lots of fuel, a cache of test kits. Once they'd gotten as much as they could comfortably carry, Blake had said that they could come back several times to empty the supplies and return it back to headquarters, since it wasn't all that far away. As soon as he'd gotten down the ladder, cleared the area and made sure the others were down safely as well, he'd contacted MacReady and updated him on the situation.

Once they'd made their way back through the tunnel, having to put down a handful of Scuttlers and a Walker, they had arrived back at the base. MacReady promptly had them all tested, and they all passed. Once they did, he began to bring them into the fold.

"Welcome to Outpost Bravo," he said. "Our new headquarters. I can't imagine that Blake didn't outline this, but I will now for emphasis: everyone pitches in, everyone pulls their own weight. We're fighting a war and we're vastly outnumbered. Now, house rules: we test every two hours, unless you're sleeping, but then you have to be tested as soon as you wake up. We're going to be sending people out for a variety of reasons, be prepared for this. Right now, though, take a few hours to eat, shower, catch some shuteye if you need to."

The men nodded and moved off to investigate the base.

"How are we doing?" Blake asked, finding himself standing alone with MacReady in the entryway to the base.

"Better, but we've still got a ways to go. We're on our feet at least. The generator is back up to one hundred percent and we've got enough fuel to last quite a while. The next big thing we need to do is fix our radio tower. Right now, we're still figuring out the best way to do that," MacReady replied. He looked tired.

"Anything you need me to do right now?" Blake asked. Although he'd been on the go for almost three hours now, he still felt full of energy, ready to take on new challenges.

"Yes, actually. Every minute we don't clear that Way Station of supplies is another minute someone else might show up and do it for us. I'd like you to take North and Weldon and start emptying the base of all the resources you can."

"Got it."

Blake headed deeper into HQ, looking for North and Weldon.

* * *

Two hours passed.

Blake led North and Weldon through the tunnel half a dozen times, both ways. Their luck held the whole time. They didn't run into any problems. They cleared the Way Station out, recovering guns, bullets, medical supplies, food, water, test kits, fuel, tools and whatever else they could think of to grab. Blake had kept an eye out for radio parts, but, unfortunately, the communications gear had been shredded in the initial disaster that had overrun the facility. After five trips, he'd taken them back to do one more sweep, found a handful of useful items, then had led them back down to HQ for the final time.

After that, the three of them had taken a lunch break. Or, hell, it could've been a breakfast break, dinner break or midnight snack. Blake had basically lost all sense of time and no one seemed to have watches.

"Blake, need you," MacReady said as they were finishing up their meal. "Actually, I could use you, too, North. We've got something."

The pair of them stood up, disposed of the remains of their meals and followed MacReady back out to the entryway, where he joined Peltola, who was dourly smoking a cigarette, in standing before a large map of the area.

"What have you got for us?" Blake asked.

"We've found a small communications facility about a half-mile away," MacReady replied, pointing to a section of the map. "Managed to get some more data from some recovered files you found at that Way Station. They should have the parts we need to repair our own radio tower, which is crucial, because we need to start gathering intel on Gen Inc, and listening in on their radio transmissions will be the quickest way to do that. Now, you can take the tunnels all the way to the radio tower. Peltola will be joining you, and you should probably bring one of the SF soldiers with you. I'll leave it up to you to determine who," MacReady replied.

"We'll get it done," Blake promised. He turned to face Peltola and North. "Let's gear up and get on with it."

* * *

It was dark, cold, smelly and miserable in the tunnel.

Blake led his squad through the grim, subterranean environment, his senses alight. In the end, he'd selected Taylor to join them. The squat, bulky combat medic seemed like a solid choice, plus, having a medic on the team rounded it out nicely. He felt fairly confident that they could deal with any threats they came up against.

They'd been walking in the gloom for five minutes now, picking their way through the debris and wreckage. So far, so good.

"North," he said, drifting closer to the dark-skinned soldier, "good to see you again."

"You too, Blake," he replied, grinning. "Couldn't believe you made it. I had a bad feeling when you went to investigate that other outpost solo."

"Well...you were right. Everything pretty much fell apart after that. Although it sounds like if I had stuck around, it would have gone even worse. At least this way I managed to take down Whitley and stop him from shipping samples of these things back stateside."

North let out and appreciative whistle. "Must've been tough," he replied.

Blake nodded. "Hardest thing I've ever had to do..." He paused, looked around. "...so far."

Up ahead, something shifted. Blake frowned, stilling the others with a raised fist. He crept forward, listening intently, trying to scout the situation out. His instincts were telling him that there was something big up ahead.

That was never good.

Blake made his way in between an unsteady stack of crates and the dark bulk of a huge cargo truck that had been abandoned some time ago. He made a mental note to search it at some point. Up ahead, he spotted a large open area, almost like an arena. Something was stomping around in that arena, something seemingly waiting for them. Something big. It was easily twelve feet tall, a thing with tree-trunk legs and long, reaching, disproportionate arms that ended in long, slender, bony fingers that seemed perfect for grabbing.

He started considering ways around it when, suddenly, the beast spotted him. And roared.

"Attack!" Blake screamed, heading through the opening and raising his MP-5. He opened fire as he began strafing, leading the creature away from the opening through which the others had to enter if they were going to help him. The beast began lumbering for him, loosing another roar of alien fury. Blake sprayed it with gunfire, emptying half his MP-5's current magazine before being forced to throw himself out of the way.

The huge Thing beast lumbered past him and smashed into the far concrete wall, sending bits of debris flying everywhere. Blake spun back around, catching sight of North, Peltola and Taylor. North and Taylor were also armed with MP-5s, Peltola had appropriated a shotgun. All three of them opened fire. Blake joined them, raising his sub-machine gun and rattling through the rest of the magazine, emptying it into the huge beast.

Black blood and chunks of flesh sprayed across the wall as the huge Walker whipped around and started coming for them again. It began making for the others, apparently intent on the larger group. Perfect. It would pass right past Blake. He quickly switched to his flamethrower, aimed up and, as it stomped past, into the hail of gunfire the other three were pouring into it, squeezed the trigger. The flame crossed the distance and clung to the inhuman creature's ugly flesh. The immense Walker caught immediately aflame.

It began to bellow and suddenly lashed out, narrowly avoiding hitting Blake's head and decapitating him. He stumbled back as the long limb flew mere inches over his head, the heat washing over him.

"Keep firing!" he shouted, spraying more flame onto the enormous creature.

The Walker let out a trumpeting shriek and took another step for Blake, coming for him, furious beyond measure, but then it hesitated, stumbled, took another step and then fell flat on the floor. It started crawling for him. Blake kept backing up, switching to his MP-5, slapping a fresh magazine in and spraying it with gunfire.

Finally, the huge thing ceased moving, burning silently, filling the air with smoke.

"Holy fuck," Blake muttered. He took a deep breath and let it out, then leaned forward slightly to examine the crispy Thing creature.

It saved his life.

A bullet whizzed by the back of his head, right where he would have been if he hadn't leaned forward, and buried itself in a crate.

"Incoming hostiles!" North roared, then opened fire.

Blake whirled around to face the other end of the open space, the way they had yet to go, and saw a half-dozen soldiers in white camo gear and gasmasks taking up position among the wreckage. Of course, because why not?

Sighting the nearest bastard, Blake popped off a luck barrage of shots. Two bullets slammed into the enemy's gasmask and the crate behind him sprayed with red gore. Didn't even get a chance to scream. The group scrabbled for cover, but there wasn't much to work with on this side. Blake managed to get behind a large crate. He saw that Peltola was retreating back the way they'd come and Taylor had taken cover behind another crate.

He couldn't see North.

Bullets pinged all around them. Cursing and wishing vainly for a grenade, he leaned cautiously out and tried to sight another one of the hostiles, but gunfire drove him back. Suddenly, he heard a noise from overhead. Glancing up, fearing that they may have been flanked, he instead saw a gun barrel poke out over the top of the cargo truck they'd passed getting in here. It started opening fire. Blake grinned. North.

Taking advantage of the new diversion, Blake leaned out, sighted another gasmask and fired. The guy's head popped like a rotten fruit. The Gen Inc trooper's offensive quickly fell apart after that, especially with three Special Forces vets on the case. They put them down with a series of quick headshots, North doing most of the work from the high ground, and then all fell silent. Carefully, Blake leaned out again and canvased the area.

"North, you see anything?" he asked.

"No, nothing, Cap. No movement."

"All right people, let's police up the ammo and move on."

They set to work.

* * *

Blake stared out the windows onto the seemingly infinite antarctic wastelands, feeling that after-action lethargy sapping his strength. That moment when the battle was over and your adrenaline was heading back down to something like normal.

They'd managed to take the communications tower.

It hadn't been too hard, since they had the element of surprise, superior firepower and an unprepared enemy. The tower wasn't very large. They'd come up from beneath, climbing a ladder and entering through a hatch that led into a basement storage room. Blake thought it was disappointing and sloppy how they hadn't welded this thing shut, or at least locked it. They wouldn't live to regret their mistake, though.

There'd only been eight personnel manning the comms tower, two of them guards. The rest were support staff. He and his squad had taken them out one by one, briefly getting into a firefight with one of the guards, but he'd taken a round through the neck and gone down. Once they'd cleared the tower, which was a three-story structure meant to act as its own miniature outpost, he'd had Peltola start to strip parts from their gear.

The attack would be two-fold: they would repair their own communications and throw a wrench in Gen Inc operations.

While Peltola had done that, he, North and Taylor had searched the tower, gathering up as much useful supplies as they could carry.

"Almost done?" Blake asked, turning away from the window.

"Just about...there we go!" Peltola said, pulling a piece of gear from a large tower of radio equipment taking up a good potion of the room they were in. "Done," he said, putting the piece carefully into his backpack, zipping it up and slipping it on. "This will be enough."

"Perfect, let's go," Blake replied.

As he began to lead Peltola back down through the tower and gather up the others, he wondered how long their luck would hold out.


	7. Chapter 07: Breakout

"Blake, ready for another mission?"

Blake glanced up from the paperback he was reading. With the Special Forces men now a part of the staff, a lot of shit was getting done a lot more quickly. For example: all the boxes stacked haphazardly, nearly to the ceiling, in the room Blake had first slept in were now sorted. Most of it was just junk, but there had been some useful supplies in there, as well as a small collection of books. Blake had managed to snag a battered, dog-eared copy of First Blood by David Morrell, a book he'd taken to reading about once a year since it came out a decade ago. He'd even heard rumblings, before he left for this hellhole, that they were considering making it into a movie.

He wondered if he'd be alive to see that movie.

"Yeah, what's up?" Blake replied, sticking a narrow slip of paper he'd hunted down to serve as a bookmark and placing the book on the table for someone else to read.

"It's time to stop resting on our feet," MacReady replied as they walked out of the mess and towards the central antechamber, which Blake had begun to think of as a briefing area, since they'd pinned maps of the area to one wall and even set up a radio station there as well.

After hitting the communications tower, Blake had led the group back through the tunnels and delivered Peltola and the parts. From there, Blake took Davis up top with Peltola to provide protection for the engineer as he repaired their own communications tower. Blake was somewhat surprised to find an actual outpost up top, and that one of the back exits actually led directly to it. It made him a little more nervous, but it was obvious that the base was long abandoned. He and Davis checked it out while Peltola got to work.

It was clearly a smaller version of the Way Station he'd encountered Chase at, though it was just a single story. He'd found a bathroom, two bedrooms, combination break room/galley, generator room, a small infirmary and three storerooms. It was obvious that whoever had been here before had taken practically everything with them.

It had taken an hour for Peltola to get the job done, and all Blake had managed to learn from Davis was the man was a grim, humorless hardass. He supposed there were worse people to have your six in a firefight. The only piece of personal information he would relinquish was that he came from Oregon. Once Peltola was done, they all went back downstairs and took a break. Now, apparently, MacReady was ready for action.

"First thing, which doesn't involve you, is that we're going to be expanding our operation to the base up top. I want to do the same thing we did down here: get it locked down, stocked up, turn on the power and defend it. While we're doing that, you are going to be part of a two-part attack. We're going to bolster our numbers. Weldon's been manning the radio and he picked up some information." They both glanced over as North and Chase entered the room. "Perfect, everyone's here. All right, listen up soldiers, this is it.

"Gen Inc is taking prisoners, lots of them. Either from the research outposts or from the Special Forces teams Whitley managed to wrangle down here, or from the initial rebellion. Obviously we don't have the resources to attack the facility I was held at, but we've managed to find a temporary holding facility about three quarters of a mile here. The three of you are going to head underground and come up from below. At the same time, Taylor and Davis will lead a topside assault. While you were fixing the radio, they managed to get my chopper back."

"What kind of intel are we going to have?" Blake asked.

"Not much, unfortunately. We don't have any idea of the interior of the building, troop strength, anything, really. We're going to have to go in blind. Now, this is only the first part of the mission. After you take the holding area, you are to take some men and hit this armory," MacReady said, pointing to their map of the overall area, "since it's so close, and take as many weapons as you can. Also, any vehicles you can find. Blake, I'm putting you in charge of this and will let you determine on the ground who goes where. Any questions?"

There were none.

"Great. Taylor and Davis already getting the chopper ready. Coordinate with them over the radio. And...good luck," MacReady said.

Blake nodded tightly, turned to look at North and Chase, then set off to gear up.

* * *

It was a difficult choice, a genuinely difficult one, but Blake thought that he hated being in these underground tunnels more than he hated being on the surface, exposed to the elements. There were plenty of reasons to hate both. On the surface, it was frozen and bitter and the shrieking of the winds never seemed to cease. Down here, it stank and there wasn't enough light and it was all too easy to get lost in the maze of debris.

But, ultimately, what decided it was the fact that there just wasn't as much room to maneuver down in the tunnels. And that was just dangerous. Sure, the snowstorm cut your visibility down to shit, but at least up there you could _move_.

It was a different story down here.

Blake, North and Chase had been picking their way through the underground tunnels for a while now. It was relatively slow going, but they were most of the way there. They'd had to put down four Walkers and about two dozen Scuttlers at this point, but at least they hadn't run into any enemies that fired back. Well, yet anyway. He was glad to see that North and Chase were performing admirably. They were quick, reactive and brave. They had, like he had been forced to, acclimated themselves to the horror of operating under these conditions. Fighting alien horrors from beyond the stars in Antarctica…

This sounded familiar, now that Blake actually thought about it like that. After a moment, he had it. Didn't H. P. Lovecraft write stories like this? Or some stories, anyway. Well, no, actually. In a Lovecraft story, you didn't really 'fight back' against horrors from beyond the stars. Really, you just cowered and went insane.

"Movement, twelve o'clock," Chase said tightly, bringing Blake back to the here and now. They'd been forced into a series of maintenance and supply tunnels after running into a large bit of impassable blockage in the primary tunnel. Chase was leading and Blake was bringing up the rear, watching their backs in this hostile environment.

All of them were rigid now, guns tucked into their shoulders. Chase cautiously made his way down the narrow corridor they were strung out along. Blake waited a moment, prepared to rush in with North and offer support, as Chase slipped through an open doorway at the end of the hallway. A second passed, two, three...a gunshot sounded, followed by a high-pitched shriek. "Clear!" Chase called. Blake let out a relieved sigh.

He and North moved ahead into the next room. It looked like the kind of place you might find beneath a power plant: all manner of dials and gauges and switchboards covered the walls. Two work areas were set up in the corners. A Scuttler corpse lay in a heap against the far wall, its black blood splashed across the concrete. Like they did with the other Scuttlers they killed, Blake applied a bit of flame to it, enough to engulf it and let it burn. Eventually it would put itself out, but it would more than likely kill the little horror.

"How much farther?" North asked.

Blake quickly checked out the map of the overall area he'd brought with him. "We're almost there," he replied. "Another fifty meters."

As they left the office and started making their way down another corridor, Chase sighed suddenly. "You know I was thinking about leaving this job...and then this shit," he muttered.

"What were you going to do?" Blake asked.

"Go stay with my brother, at least for a while. I got this younger brother, Tommy, real fuck up. In and out of juvie all through middle and high school. Usually for petty shit, nothing serious. You know, drinking, pot, breaking into places he wasn't supposed to be just because, graffiti. Shit like that. I tried to straighten him out before I left for the Army, and I thought I got through to him. He's five years younger than me. But then I hear that he's doing hard time for armed robbery. Then he gets out, boosts a car six months later, goes back again..." He shook his head, sighed heavily.

"Last year, he finally got out after doing a stint for getting caught with a hooker. I happened to be home on leave around that time. We got to talking and I guess, in between fucking up over the past decade, he'd been gaining knowledge on cars and car repair. And he'd actually managed to land a job at a garage nearby and had his own little apartment. We've been talking on and off over the past year, and my parents, too and...he finally seems to be not fucking up. He's kept the same job and he's been asking me if I might want get a place together, because I've been talking to him, telling him I'm thinking about getting out of the business."

"You think it's a good idea?" North asked.

"Shit, I don't know. But I do know that I'm...tired. I've been doing this for a long time now. I want to at least try to have a life where guys aren't shooting at me. But now? Shit, I don't know if any of us are going to make it out of here."

"We'll make it," Blake murmured.

They stopped as they arrived at their destination. Blake double-checked the map, ensured that they were where they were supposed to be, then pulled out his radio. He reached out to Taylor and Davis, worrying about the radio's ability underground.

The call came back, though it sounded weak.

" _Taylor here. Over."_

"Blake here. We're ready for you to begin your assault. Over."

" _Affirmative. We'll be on location in approximately fifteen minutes. We'll radio when we're closer. Over."_

"Copy that. Out."

The three of them waited around, securing the area, searching the room they were in and a few rooms around it for supplies or weapons, not managing to turn up very much. He also had climbed up the ladder to double-check the hatchway, in case it was welded shut or locked, but found it serviceable. When the call came back, they were ready.

As soon as Taylor gave them the warning, Blake immediately began climbing the ladder. The time to act had come. He felt relieved. Standing around and waiting had never been his strong suit. He managed to get up the ladder pretty quickly. He, North and Chase crawled up into a shower area. Luckily, no one was around. Blake secured the area while the other two crawled out. Once they were out, he led them on.

The trio passed silently through a locker area, then a common bathroom. As they drew closer to the exit, Blake began to hear voices. Someone was shouting commands. Blake opened the door and peered out into a corridor beyond. He looked left and right, seeing nothing but hearing several voices coming from the right.

Time to get this show started.

Getting his MP-5 ready for action, Blake hurried down the corridor, North and Chase at his back. He took a left, moving ever closer to the sound of the voices and finally managed to slip into a large, open garage filled with soldiers, cargo and several vehicles. Blake swept the huge garage with his gaze. He counted close to a dozen and a half gasmask-wearing soldiers, unloading cargo, patrolling the area or just standing around.

Blake, Chase and North hid themselves behind a large line of metallic crates. Blake and Chase helped boost North carefully and quietly up on top of the tallest crate, so he could provide overwatch, and then they split up, each of them going to separate ends of the line of crates with instructions to open fire when Blake did.

He edged to the corner of the end crate, keeping his ears open for that crucial sound. Helicopter blades. How far away were they? How long could they keep hidden? Ever second here was one more second closer to them getting discovered. What was worse, the shrieking of the winds blowing in through a large, open cargo door at the far end of the room made it harder to hear. Blake listened intently, hoping-

He heard the helicopter blades. Almost as he squeezed the trigger, the sound of a chaingun ripping through the air could be heard. The MP-5 kicked in his hands, cutting down a pair of hostiles that were trying to lower a large crate from the back of a truck. At the same time, North and Chase opened up. The three of them began ripping through their targets, who were running around in confusion, attempting to return fire.

Outside, something exploded with a tremendous force and briefly filled the garage with a fiery light. Blake emptied his magazine and slapped a fresh one in. They were doing good. He spied a trio of other troopers coming in through a door across the room, aimed and fired. A barrage of lead pelted their position, spraying blood and shattering bones as the bullets impacted along the length of their bodies. They died screaming.

Five minutes later, all was silent.

"Let's clean it up!" Blake called. "Move through the base!"

Both Chase and North responded affirmatively. Taylor and Davis radioed in that there were no hostiles outside. Blake told them to circle the camp until they cleared the base, to make sure no one made it out alive, and to keep an ear open for any backup. He, North and Chase quickly made their way through the facility, but quickly discovered that there wasn't a great deal of space to check out. After putting down a handful of stragglers, Blake had Taylor land while he, North and Chase gathered in the prison block.

It was a large, open room. Three of the walls were taken up completely by cell doors. Most of the men inside were demanding to be let out. Blake had managed to gather two dozen test kits from throughout the facility. Apparently Gen Inc was mass producing them and being pretty liberal with them, so that was good for everyone at least.

"All right, listen up!" Blake called, standing in the center of the room. He'd counted ten survivors. "My name is Blake, I'm a Captain in the Special Forces. I oppose Gen Inc and I'm planning on kicking their ass to hell and back. I'm building an army. I'd appreciate your help. Here's how we're going to do this: I'm going to open your cells one at a time and test you. If you pass, you get to come out, if you don't, you die. Once we've tested everyone, you can either sign on with me and my men, or...shit, I don't know, try to survive alone? If you're here, it's obvious that Gen Inc has no love for you. So, let's get started!"

They moved slowly and cautiously. Blake had Chase and North cover him while he began opening the doors, one by one. The first two men, one of which was wearing a Special Forces uniform, weren't infected. He sent them out to wait. Blake opened the door, approached the third guy and stuck his arm. He wore a white jumpsuit with a beanie that had a red cross on it, marking him as a Gen Inc medic. He wondered what the guy had done to warrant this treatment. As he was thinking this, the test kit suddenly shrieked and burst in his hand.

"Fuck!" Blake snapped, dropping it and backing away. The man started coming for him, vibrating violently. Blake lit him up with his flamethrower and, stepping back out of the cell, hastily closed the door. The door designs were the same as the base he'd found himself in after getting captured by Whitley. They had that sci-fi appearance and split down the middle when they opened, disappearing into niches in the walls on either side.

Blake watched the false human burn as it tried to transform and break its way out of the cell, but the glass of the door was made of stern stuff and the creature soon succumbed to the fire. Blake let out a heavy sigh.

"Okay, from now on, you all test yourselves," he said.

Fifteen minutes later, two more humans were identified as Thing beasts and put down. The rest of the survivors gathered in center of the room.

Blake stood before them. As a show of good faith, he tested himself, North and Chase. Once they were proven clean, he cleared his throat. "All right, we're all clean. We don't have a lot of time. We've got a base of operations not too far from here, does anyone not want to join the fight against Gen Inc?" he asked.

No one answered, though Blake thought it was kind of a loaded question. Where the hell else did they have to go?

"I guess you're all drafted. Your first mission is to go through this facility and gather up as much guns, ammo and whatever supplies you can find. Also...I need two good men to help with an assault," Blake said, looking around.

The two Special Forces soldiers among the group stepped forward. Blake nodded. "Okay, North, I want you to oversee things here and then get them back to base."

"Yes, Captain," North replied. "Let's go, people!" he called, leading them out of the room.

The two men identified themselves. Miller was a combat engineer. He was of average height and weight, though he seemed to tend towards a leaner build than a bulkier one. He covered his shaved bald head with a blue beanie. Nichols was much larger, a bulky mountain of a man easily over six feet who identified himself as a combat expert. Both of them recognized Blake's authority. After coordinating with Taylor and Davis, he led Chase, Nichols and Miller out of the room, through the base and back into the underground area, pausing to gather weapons for them.

It was time for the next phase of the mission.


	8. Chapter 08: Priorities

Back in the tunnels again.

Blake hadn't been looking forward to it, but honestly, it was too valuable a strategy to give up. He wondered why Gen Inc kept overlooking this disadvantage. He supposed, from their point of view, that although the tunnels were overrun with Thing creatures, they were just that: creatures. Beasts. And the only human beings opposing them had only very recently entered the playing field, at least from their perspective.

Although they were technically wrong on both accounts, Thing creatures were smart and he'd been leading a campaign against Whitley and Gen Inc for days now, he thought it mainly came down to one thing: they were arrogant. They assumed that their superiority was the natural order of things. If that guy Graves was running the show, then it had to be doubly true. The guy was obviously full of himself and addicted to power.

It would be his, and Gen Inc's, downfall.

Blake would see to that personally.

The only good news from their excursion was that it didn't have to last very long. The armory was barely thirty meters away from the temporary holding area they'd just assaulted. The bad news was that there was more than likely going to be a lot more security around it and they were more than likely going to be on alert. Which was going to make this assault a lot harder. He was glad to have three Special Forces personnel at his back.

"Here it is," he said, stopping before a ladder bolted to the far wall. In the distance, they could hear Thing creatures lurking in the shadows.

Glad to be out of this miserable nightmare, Blake hustled up the ladder and opened the hatch he found at the top. He peered out and found himself in a storeroom. As he got out and secured the area, he realized that he wasn't in a storage _room_ , he was in a storage _shack_. And, judging by what he saw out the windows, it wasn't all that close to the base. Not good. There was a lot of bad space in between the shack and the base.

Blake pulled out his radio. "Taylor, how close are you to the base? Over."

" _We're pretty much there, hiding in the snowstorm, though I don't know how long we can keep it up. Over,"_ Taylor replied.

"Begin your assault, we need some cover fire. The exit from the tunnel leads to an exterior shack. Over."

" _Understood. Beginning our assault now. Out."_

Blake updated the others on the situation, though they'd picked most of it up from the conversation. "We're gonna split up," Blake said. "Chase and I, Nichols and Miller. Get into the base however you can and start doing damage until everyone inside is dead."

The three men nodded tightly to him, holding up the weapons they'd retrieved from the corpses produced by the last mission. Almost immediately, Blake heard the churning drone of a chopper-mounted chaingun earning its keep. An explosion ruptured the area, briefly visible through the swirling gray-white snow.

Blake opened the door and burst out into the cold, sprinting for the base. Chase joined him and the other two broke away. He spied a doorway in the metal, snowbound walls. Overhead, the chopper swooped low and circled back around, doing another strafing run. A few streams of gunfire spat back at it. Blake hit the door and tried it. Locked. He cursed, aimed for the locking mechanism and fired a few times.

The door swung open.

Well, no sense in trying to stay quiet now. Blake and Chase hurried into the room, finding themselves in a small entryway. Hard-edged voices came from further within the base. Blake approached the open door at the other side of the room and then froze as several men in white camo rushed past. As soon as they were clear of the door, Blake hurried up to it, quickly looked back the way they'd come, confirmed no one else was coming and then stepped out into the corridor. He leveled his MP-5 and opened fire.

Shooting someone in the back, even when they worked for Gen Inc, was about as appealing as it sounded. He wasn't proud, but they had a job to do. A job more important than any of the petty conflicts he'd been involved with before. If they failed here, there was a good chance that the human race ended, and soon.

He cut down three of the bastards and then rushed after them. Chase hurried after him. They checked each of the doors as they raced down the corridor, opening them up and pointing their guns within, quickly searching each room. Most of them were offices or storage areas and most were empty. Every now and then they'd find a Gen Inc trooper or engineer and gun them down with quick shots to the head.

They reached the end of the corridor and opened the door at the end.

Blake heard a gunshot the second the door opened, hear a brief scream and felt something warm and wet spray the back of his head. Reacting on instinct, he raised his rifle and empty the whole magazine into the three men that were beyond, shredding them into chewed up meat. When he was sure there was no one else coming, he slapped a fresh magazine in and glanced back. The grim reality became immediately apparent: Chase was down.

There was a nasty, bloody socket where his right eye had once been.

"Fuck!" Blake snapped, hurrying into the next room, which was a transitional area with several more exits. He looked around, checking the signs over the doors. The way he'd just come from was marked **Offices**. To his right was **Garage** , then to the left was **Dormitories** and then finally, ahead of him was **Armory & Security**. Perfect. He hurried forward, eager for some heavier firepower to unleash his cold fury.

He opened the door and bumped into a trooper in white camo heading out. Blake brought his boot up, planted it on the man's chest and shoved him. The trooper stumbled backwards, trying to bring his gun up but failing as he hit the floor hard. Blake leveled his MP-5 and put three shots through the hostile's gasmask, then kept going, butt of his gun tucked tight against his shoulder. He moved down a narrow corridor that ended in an L junction, took the left-hand turn and moved down another tight corridor, pausing by the first door he spied in the left wall.

Opening the door revealed an abandoned security station. He moved in, looking around, and found a bank of monitors dominating the far wall. Frowning, he studied them quickly. Some of them were totally blacked out or registered only static, but at least half were still functioning. His eyes were drawn to a few that were showing gunfire. He spied Nichols and Miller in a pitched firefight with a half dozen soldiers in a mess hall.

They looked to be holding their own.

"I'm on the way," Blake muttered, leaving the security station and heading back through the other door. It opened to a large room that was a veritable treasure trove. He stood before ranked rows of shelves, guns lockers, tables, crates and glass cases, all of them holding guns, guns, and more guns. He also spied ammo and grenades.

Blake quickly snagged some more ammo for his MP-5, grabbed a shotgun and filled a few pockets with shells, then grabbed several fragmentation grenades and a few flame grenades. Perfect. He'd be back later, this was really just a bombing run more than a thorough sweep and clear. Once his pockets were full, Blake left the armory, hurried back down the corridor and raced into the dormitory wing. The entrance lobby was abandoned, but he could hear gunfire somewhere nearby. He crossed the lobby and passed through a door.

Traversing a short passageway, Blake found himself at the mess. Perfect.

Nichols and Miller were behind a flipped over table, trying to put down the soldiers that were piling on the pressure. Blake was across the room from both of them and was in the perfect position to take down the hostiles. He pulled the pin on one of his frag grenades and tossed it towards the enemies, who were grouped behind a serving line.

As soon as he released the grenade, he hurried back through the door, taking cover as the grenade exploded in a tremendous thunderclap of fire and screaming death. As the grenade blast fell away, a strong silence fell over the mess hall. Blake stepped back in, sweeping the area with his gun barrel. Nichols and Miller rose cautiously from their hiding place.

"Come on, we need to clear this place out and see what we're working with," Blake said.

Both men responded affirmatively. They began moving through the base, checking all the side rooms and any potential hiding spots. Fifteen minutes later, they had killed a handful of stragglers and had gathered in the garage.

" _Blake, we've got a problem. Over,"_ Blake said.

Blake pulled out his radio. "What's the situation? Over."

" _Picking up some chatter over the radio. Sounds like they're sending reinforcements and they're pretty close. Over."_

Blake sighed, considering the situation. They'd found a couple of cargo trucks that would serve very nicely in getting a shitload of guns and ammo back to headquarters. Finally, he came to a decision. "Taylor, land the chopper. I'll man the gun. Davis will help Nichols and Miller load up as many weapons as they can while we provide cover. Over."

" _Affirmative, on my way down. I'll land next to the garage. Out."_

Blake headed for the exit while Nichols and Miller jogged out of the garage and made for the armory. As he stepped outside, he spied Taylor settling the chopper down on a landing pad out there. Davis was manning the huge chaingun that hung out the side. He hopped off as Blake approached, gave him a thumbs up and headed inside. Blake stepped up into the cabin of the chopper and yelled for Taylor to take off.

He manned the chaingun.

Taylor took off a few seconds later. Blake grunted as the chopper ascended into the skies. Taylor began circling the base and both of them kept a sharp watch out. A minute went by. Then three. Then five minutes. Suddenly, machine gun fire spat up from the ground in a barrage of lead. Cursing, Blake lowered the chaingun as Taylor swung around to get him a better angle. He spied a flatbed truck coming in, the back choked with reinforcements. They were opening fire on him. Blake took aim and let loose, feeling like an archangel.

The gunfire hit the ground in a spray of churning snow a few feet in front of the truck, then shifted sharply towards it. The array of powerful bullets hit the engine, immediately causing it to burst into a spray of sparks. The cabin was chewed up, the men inside no doubt killed instantly, then the barrage of gunfire hit the back and began converting the soldiers there into chewed up piles of shredded meat. He thought he could hear them screaming.

"There's another!" Taylor called.

Blake saw them. He turned the machine gun on another flatbed and a pair of snowmobiles. Bringing the line of heavy fire across the snowmobiles, he managed to snag both of the smaller, more nimble vehicles in a pair of lucky hits. They mushroomed into fireballs. As he turned the chaingun on the other flatbed and gave it a similar treatment, he cried out as a hollow banging suddenly sounded. The chopper jerked to one side.

"What the fuck was that!?" Blake called.

"Another chopper! Take it down!" Taylor roared back.

The chopper swung wildly and Blake suddenly found himself facing an enemy chopper. Instincts igniting, his body reacted faster than his mind could, he opened fire. At the same time, so did the other chopper, and it had a chaingun mounted on its nose. Blake's bullets struck the cockpit dead on. Windows shattered, metal shredded and flames began to consume the chopper as it went down. At the same time, Blake felt his own helicopter jerk suddenly.

"Shit!" Taylor snapped. The chopper began veering wildly off course, flying away from the base. "Those shots hit something important! We're going down-"

This was the last thing that Blake heard as the chopper suddenly veered to one side and he was thrown out the open door.

* * *

Blake gasped awake.

He sat up sharply, dislodging a drift of snow. He was freezing. How long had he been out? Staggering to his feet, he looked around, shivering violently. In the distance, he saw a black pall of smoke rising into the sky. Taylor and the chopper. Blake set off, kicking his way through the deep snow. The man might still be alive. As he started walking, hurrying as quickly as he could, he realized that some of his weapons were missing.

Actually, he realized as he checked himself over, all but his MP-5, which had miraculously remained slung over his neck, were gone. Patting down his pockets, he found only a handful of magazines and none of the grenades he'd snagged. Fuck. He was naked without a flame-based weapon. He kept his eyes open as he trekked through the snow to the chopper, but by the time he'd reached the crash site, he hadn't found anything.

The chopper was definitely burning, and it wouldn't be long before it was completely engulfed in flames.

"Taylor!" Blake called as he hurried in. Coughing, struggling to see through the smoke, he forced his way into the cockpit. The man was still there, still strapped into his seat, but unmoving. Blake checked his pulse, found it strong and regular, grunted and undid the seatbelt. As he shifted the man, he saw that one of his legs looked broken. Fucking fantastic. The smoke was getting worse and the heat level was rising.

Blake quickly got out of the chopper, pulling Taylor along with him. As he got clear, he picked the man up and hauled him over his shoulders. The guy was fucking heavy, but Blake knew he had no other choice except to abandon him, and he wasn't doing that. For a moment, he was stymied, uncertain of where to go. Ninety nine point ninety nine percent of Antarctica was just inhabitable wastelands. It wasn't like there were a lot of places to go.

But then he saw a dark shape up ahead that was roughly building shaped. Though it wasn't a very large building.

He set off.


	9. Chapter 09: In Darkness

"Great," Blake muttered as he looked around the room he'd come into.

The dark outline had resolved into a single shed, not unlike the one he'd come up in near the armory, though it was a bit larger. Clearly, it was meant as some kind of emergency survival shed. Unfortunately, from the look of the place, it had been ransacked. There was still a cot in one corner, at least, so Blake walked over to it and carefully laid Taylor out on it. The man was still unconscious. Blake hoped he hadn't fallen into a coma or something. He stood up and began checking out the small room for supplies.

There were some empty boxes, a vacant table, a kitchenette area, even a bathroom in the back with a toilet and sink. All of it had been cleaned out, but at least the toilet still worked. He relieved himself and then kept looking. In one of the corners, he found a hatch that led into the underground. Well…at least they had somewhere to go, not that it was exactly desirable. Blake went and checked Taylor over again. There was a gash on his forehead and his leg definitely looked broken. Sighing, Blake decided to get this next part over with while the guy was still passed out. After a bit of hunting, he managed to put together a makeshift splint.

He set the bone to the best of his ability and put the man's leg in the splint, then tied a makeshift headband around his wound out of some long-johns he'd found. From there, he decided to see what they actually had to work with. He took everything out of his pockets and set it out on a nearby table, then did the same with Taylor, patting the man down and inventorying his supplies. When he looked at the meager amount he'd gathered, he frowned. It wasn't much to work with. Worst of all, they no longer had a definitive way to kill any Thing beasts they came across. There was just an MP-5 with two spare magazines, a pistol with three spare magazines, a flashlight and a handful of shotgun shells that he'd managed to hang on to.

Taylor groaned, slowly coming awake.

Blake grabbed his MP-5, made sure it was fully loaded, then pocketed the remaining magazines for it, then slipped the flashlight into his front pocket and secured it.

"What happened...fuck, my _leg,_ " Taylor groaned.

"The chopper went down, I managed to get us to a shack. There's bad news and...less bad news. This place has been pretty much cleaned out, we've only got an MP-5 and a pistol between us, no flame-based weaponry, no test kits, no medical supplies, no radio and your leg is broken."

"Fucking fantastic...so what's the less bad news?" Taylor grunted.

"This leads back into the tunnels, so we're not technically stranded here."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"And...double-shit, since we can't really test and I can't walk on my own. But if you were infected, you'd have infected me while I was unconscious. And I still feel like me...ugh."

"Yep. You ready to get started? Heading down that ladder is going to be a real bitch," Blake replied.

Taylor sighed and sat up. "Yeah, I've been through worse. I think."

Blake opened up the hatch and started heading down. He heard Taylor grunting in effort as he began making his way down. The good news was that it wasn't particularly high up off the floor. The bad news was that it led into the main tunnel that circled through this whole region. Where they would be most exposed. From up high, Blake surveyed the area. He saw a lot of debris, a lot of burned up crates, a few worrying areas of dark movement and, most important of all, a strong, bright light about twenty meters away, along the far wall.

"That's where we're going," he said to Taylor, indicating the bright area.

"Got it," he replied tightly.

They made their way down to the ground level and surveyed the area. Unfortunately, there was a lot of crap between them and their goal. Blake took Taylor's arm over his shoulder, supporting him, then found an entrance into the maze of debris and set off, flicking his flashlight on. A minute passed in the mostly silent darkness. Progress was slow. Taylor could put hardly any pressure on his left leg. They moved in between a pair of ruined trucks, past smashed windows and blood-smeared hulls and large crates and huge pieces of concrete with rebar sticking out. Blake was convinced something was in the maze with them.

The deeper they went, the more he began to hear something breathing unevenly and plodding around. His pulse was picking up and he fought for control. Both men hurried on in grim silence, moving between the uneven alcoves of debris. Whatever it was kept pace with them from elsewhere in the maze.

As they closed in on the mysterious bright light, something cut loose with a roar behind them. Blake glanced back and saw that what had been following them, a hideously misshapen Walker, had finally found its way to them.

And it was coming right for them.

"Hurry!" Blake screamed.

He and Taylor rushed down to the end of the narrow alcove they were and burst through the exit, into an open area. Across an open space, Blake saw a door that looked like it led to a secure area. It was all they had for right now. He and Taylor hurried as quickly as they could, hearing the creature coming for them, panting thickly, footfalls plodding. They got in through the open door. Blake looked around frantically and saw a button pad next to the door. He could see the Walker rushing for them. Spying the word **LOCK** on one of the buttons, he pushed it. The door slammed closed. The Walker began to howl and beat on it.

A few dents appeared, but nothing more.

"Close fucking call," Taylor muttered.

Blake nodded and quickly looked around the room they'd come to. From what he could tell, it was a security center. His first thought was that there should be more weapons here, but, unfortunately, it looked like the place had been cleared out as well. He sat Taylor down in one of the few chairs, then took a moment to fully search the area. A few minutes later, he'd determined that this was another bad news and less bad news situation.

"Shit," he muttered.

"What?" Taylor asked.

Blake was staring down at a computer on a desk at the back of the room. "Well, there's a problem. This area is running on emergency reserve power, and it isn't going to last much longer. And, as far as I can tell, that door is not going to be locked if the power goes out. The only good news is that I found a map of the immediate area. There's a vent at the back of this room that will lead to a maintenance area that houses the local generator."

"Great," Taylor muttered. "Well, you'd better get going. Sooner you try and fix the problem, the better. It sounds like we don't have much time."

They both could hear the Walker pounding around outside.

Blake considered the situation briefly, then nodded tightly. "I'll be as quick as I can."

"I'll be waiting," Taylor replied.

Blake headed back to the vent.

* * *

Luck stuck with him through the vents.

He didn't run into any Scuttlers or other nasty things while crawling through. He passed by a few other vent grates, peering into derelict offices and storage rooms, and finally reached the end of the vent shaft. Kicking open the grate, he looked around the generator room. The few lights that were on showed a room packed with gear and equipment. Blake hoped he wouldn't have to do much, he wasn't exactly an engineer. Peering out, he didn't see anything immediately threatening, so he hopped down from the vent shaft.

Blake spent a moment clearing the nooks and crannies of the room, and was rewarded.

"Thank you," he muttered, spying a blowtorch abandoned on a table scattered with spare parts and tools. It wasn't a flamethrower, but it would get the job done. He checked its fuel canister, found it full and secured the weapon.

From there, he checked out the generator. It took him about two minutes to make the very relief-inspiring discovery that there was nothing actually wrong with the generator. It was just running low on fuel. And _that_ he could deal with. Following the reek of gasoline, he moved into an adjacent room and found a few fuel canisters. As he emptied three of them into the generator, suddenly, the lights went out in a dying hum of power.

However, as he emptied the final canister, he quickly restarted the generator and it hummed back to life. The lights sprang into existence, brighter than before.

Satisfied that he'd done his job, Blake crawled back up into the vent and made his way back towards the security center. He began to make plans. The first order of business was to try and find some way to the communicate with the others. If that wasn't an option, he had to find out at least where he was and a way back. But it had been a long walk and it'd be an even longer walk back with an injured man, armed with only a blowtorch and an MP-5.

Up ahead, he heard a scream. Taylor.

Blake began hurrying. Gunshots cut through the air, reverberating down to him through the metal vent duct. Up ahead, he could see the place he'd first entered through. There were flashes of movement and the bright bursts of muzzle flare. Then more screaming.

"Taylor!" Blake called, going as quickly as he could.

Right as he reached the entrance, he saw the hideous Walker they'd outrun earlier standing over Taylor, who lay crumpled in a bloody heap on the floor, half his head missing. Blake screamed as he aimed the blowtorch directly into the Walker's malformed face and squeezed the trigger, bringing the barrel up and down, catching the horrid thing aflame. He was just close enough to do it. His job done, he pulled back, out of reach, sick with guilt and fury. He'd been too late. He waited the Walker out as it shrieked and howled and eventually collapsed.

Once he was sure it was down, Blake crawled out of the vent and surveyed the scene of destruction. The door he thought he'd locked hung open. Too late. Blake put it out of his mind and performed a quick search of the station after locking the door firmly this time. He got back onto the computer and, after a minute of searching, came up with a larger map of the surrounding area. The first thing that jumped out at him was an elevator shaft about fifty meters away. It was marked as a cargo entrance into a 'Biological Research Facility'.

Could he afford to miss such an opportunity?

Blake considered it for a long moment and decided that no, he couldn't. He was here, now, and he needed to take the chance. He had to get in there and at least do some recon or maybe throw a wrench in the gears. Once he was sure there was nothing else in here for him, Blake performed the grizzly task of sending Taylor off with a funeral pyre, since he was certainly infected now. As the security center began to fill with smoke and the stench of burning flesh, Blake quickly unlocked the front door and headed back out into the tunnel.

Back into hell.

At first, the walk wasn't so bad. He navigated the broken maze of debris, crates and ruined vehicles, listening intently for hostiles, and ran into nothing and no one. He thoughts began drifting as he walked. How many had died in service to this mad war? How many more would? Would he be alive to see the end of it? Would it end? Would this be the end of the human race? He thought about the fallen, the dozens of men he'd met down here, fought with, tried to save and failed. All of Delta Team. Pierce. Collins in the warehouse. The men in the submarine. The technicians and medics who had rebelled against Gen Inc. Burrows. Chase. Now Taylor. Good men who didn't deserve this crap. How much longer would the war rage on down here at the bottom of the world? As he thought this, he realized how tired he was.

He'd been going for hours now and even after refueling in the makeshift HQ, the past several days were taking their toll on his body. He was sore, he hurt, he was starving and his ached like a bad tooth. And then of course there was the constant threat of infection. At least in death there would be some rest, but down here you generally couldn't even count on a clean kill. As Blake closed in on where the lift was supposed to be, he heard sounds nearby. Heavy, plodding footfalls….a Walker. No, more than one of the awful things.

Blake came suddenly into a clearing.

The good news was that he'd made it to the lift, and it was open, as if waiting for him. The bad news was that he spied three Walkers advancing on him. Blake reacted on instinct, lighting up the nearest Walker with the blowtorch and retreating towards the inviting elevator. The interior was clean and well-lit. He raced inside and smashed his fist on the close button. Mercifully, the doors were quick, and they snapped shut, halting the Walkers' advance. The elevator began to ascend, leaving the Thing creatures behind.

Blake began to form a plan, thinking of stopping the lift soon and climbing up and out of a hatch, into the elevator shaft itself. But even as he was reaching for the emergency stop button, the elevator crashed to a halt.

An intercom clicked on. _"Captain Blake...if I had known you'd simply walk into my grasp without a fight, I wouldn't have sent all those men after you."_

Graves.

Blake looked around frantically. He spied a small, blinking CCTV camera in an upper corner of the cargo elevator. Almost as soon as he saw it, a hissing noise sounded. Blake began to feel lightheaded. Gas, the bastard was gassing him.

He raised his MP-5, not sure what he was going to do with it, an automatic reaction to a threat, and then the world went black.


	10. Chapter 10: Jailbreak

"Hey...can you hear me?...come on, wake up..."

Blake uttered a thick groan as the world came back to him in bits and pieces. The first thing he became aware of was the fact that he had a pounding headache. The second was the smell: it smelled like he was in a hospital, which set him on edge. He'd never liked hospitals. Someone was trying to talk to him, a voice he didn't recognize. As he shifted and opened his eyes, a brilliant white light cut into his head, making the pain flare.

"Come on, get up, it's important," the voice insisted.

Groaning again, feeling a million little aches and pains assault him, Blake shifted once more and slowly sat up.

He was in a cell of stainless steel. A single bright light was bolted to the ceiling overhead in a metal grille. Looking around, he found that he was on a thin metal slab jutting out of the wall, sharing company with a stainless steel toilet and sink and nothing more.

"Hey! Here!" the voice whispered intently.

Blake turned his head. There was a small window over his bed. A man with wild white hair, pallid skin and dark bags under his eyes stared in. He looked crazy.

"Who are you?" Blake asked, rubbing his head and remembering how he had stupidly walked right into a trap.

"Nuzzi," the man replied. "Doctor Dario Nuzzi."

"Captain Blake."

"Ah! Perfect, I was hoping it was you. Graves has had a lot to say about you and MacReady," the man said.

"Fantastic. What do you want?" he grumbled, leaning his head down and massaging the back of his neck.

"I want to help you escape, and, in doing so, help myself escape. I was one of the lead scientists for Gen Inc. I'm a biologist and geneticist and I was helping them map the genetics of the Cloud Virus," Nuzzi explained.

"So what the hell are you doing in here then?"

"When we started capturing people, using them as live test subjects, when the experiments grew brutal…I could no longer be a part of it. I tried to stop them. I failed and they locked me up. Now I'm going to be experimented on along with the others."

"So...you said you had a way out of here?" Blake asked.

"Yes. I've studied the schematics of this facility intently. I was always concerned something like this might happen. Beneath your bed is a maintenance hatch, locked tight. But, here, take this." He fed a thin metal rod through one of the narrow holes in the glass. "Use it to unlock the hatch. That hatch will lead you down into the maintenance areas. Once you get down into the tunnel below these cells, go left, follow it to the end, then take a right and follow _that_ corridor to an end. You will find several doors. Go through the one marked Electrical B Three. Find the master control switch in that room and throw it."

"What will that do?" Blake asked as he got up and then crouched down beneath the bed. He found the hatch the man was talking about and began to fiddle with the locking mechanism.

"That will cut electricity to a good portion of the base, including these cells and the cells containing the specimens."

"This doesn't sound like a safe plan," Blake murmured. _There_ , he had it. The locking mechanism popped open, and thus did the hatch.

Nuzzi laughed. "Nothing down here is safe, but it's our only option. Listen, when you do this, come back and find me. I have vital information and I can help you take down Graves and Gen Inc. They've gone completely mad."

"All right, I'll be back as soon as I can. Don't die."

"I haven't so far."

Blake crawled down into a narrow shaft that the hatch led to and made his way quickly down the ladder, trying to get his thoughts sorted. How long had he been out? Had anything happened to him while he'd been unconscious? Was he infected? He didn't _feel_ infected, but then again, what if you didn't know? He didn't particularly like this train of thought, because there was nothing he could do about it at present, so he derailed it. Just in time, too. The ladder came to an end. He found himself in a small niche in a metal wall.

Poking his head out, he looked left, and then right. There was a ceiling of pipes dripping with condensation overhead. The walls were made of shiny new metal, some of them marred with instrumentation panels crammed with dials, switches and buttons. Blake broke left, making his way down the narrow corridor he found himself in. As he did, he began to pat himself down, his head slowly coming back into the game.

The good news was that they'd left him in his cold weather gear, so if he had to go outside for whatever reason, he had a fighting chance at least. The bad news was that they'd stripped him of what little gear, guns and ammo he'd had left. Back to square zero, unfortunately. He'd have to resupply from some enemies or raid an armory if he wanted to get back in the game. The corridor he was in came to a halt. He stood at a crossroads, looking around, trying to determine if there was anyone down here with him, but he couldn't tell.

He broke right and set off once more, eager to get this show on the road.

After another thirty seconds, he'd found the door Nuzzi had instructed him to hunt down. Opening it up, he froze as he saw a man in a blue jumpsuit with a clipboard. He'd been staring at some dials, but now he was staring at Blake. There was a pistol on his hip, in a holster. For a long moment, the two men stared at each other, as if on opposite sides of a yawning abyss. Then, Blake moved. He jolted forward, moving a little bit before the engineer did when he began to reach for the pistol at his hip. Blake smashed into him.

He managed to get him whipped around, slammed him into one of the walls and then began choking him out. The man abandoned the effort to get at his pistol and instead tried to break Blake's hold on him. A moment later, he was out like a light, his body going slack. Blake set the man down, considering his options. He wasn't sure he wanted to kill the man. What if he had no idea what was going on here? What if he didn't deserve to die? So, finally, Blake relieved the man of his fully-loaded pistol and a single magazine, then hauled his body out of the room, across the hall and into a storage room.

Satisfied that he'd be out of there before the man woke up, Blake returned to the other room, located the switch and pulled it. Nothing happened. He waited for about ten seconds before, distantly, he heard an alarm begin to cycle. Sure that his job had been done, Blake left the room and began jogging back down the corridors.

A moment later, he was back in his cell. The door at the front was open.

"You did it!" Nuzzi cried, joining him in his cell.

"I did. Now what?" Blake asked, pulling out the pistol.

"Now we find some guns, some allies and Graves. And then we kill him. I know where we can find an armory and Graves," Nuzzi replied.

"Fine, stay behind me."

Outside, beyond the relative safety of the cell, absolute chaos reigned. The cell led into an enormous room that reminded Blake vaguely of his old high school gymnasium. Emergency lighting had flared to life, painting the area in an uncomfortable yellow light. Dozens of uncertain figures raced about, trying to escape the facility.

Some of them wore Special Forces uniforms.

" _Soldiers! Front and center!_ " Blake screamed, hoping to be heard above the din of chaos.

It caught the attention of three men, and they hurried over to stand before him and Nuzzi.

"My name is Captain Blake. I'm going to kill Graves and I need assistance. Consider yourselves drafted," he snapped.

"Yes, Captain!" the three men responded.

Blake couldn't help but feel a strong appreciation for the chain of command. All the rest of the world might be going to shit around you, but the regulations and routine of the military that had been pounded into many a soldier's head could still be relied upon.

"Let's move out!" he called, and followed Nuzzi's instructions as the man pointed out a side entrance that a lot of the others seemed to be missing. He wanted to help them all, as they would make a veritable army, but right now there simply wasn't time, and he could end the war here and now if he successfully managed to assassinate Graves.

In the distance, he heard screaming and the staccato burst of automatic gunfire. And, not distant enough, the inhuman roaring of Thing creatures.

There was no time for conversation as Blake led Nuzzi and the three men through the door and into a side passageway. He'd managed to pick up a team of two soldiers and an engineer. The soldiers were named Cooper and Wilson, the engineer Smith. Blake had to get them weapons and fast. And he needed to lay his hands on a flamethrower or they were all royally screwed. Around them, the base was alive with awful activity.

The corridor ended in another door and Blake opened it up. As he peered out, something on fire streaked past the doorway. Someone was screaming and he heard the staccato burst of gunfire. He surveyed the immediate area, finding a larger corridor that ended not far to the left and kept going to the right before terminating in a T junction. A trio of soldiers were trying to put down a burning Walker that was made of tough stuff.

Blake stepped out, took aim and put a round through one of the soldier's gasmasks. The glass lens shattered in a spray of blood and the man went down, slamming to the metallic floor. Blake aimed and fired off another two shots, hitting a second soldier in the arm and then once more in the neck. The third man was so distracted by these sudden turn of events that the Walker slammed right into him and both of them tumbled to floor, becoming a single, fused entity of screaming, writhing flames. Slowly, they stopped moving.

"Let's go," Blake said.

Jogging down the corridor with the others, towards the T-junction, they paused to police up whatever guns and ammo they could find. Blake snatched up an MP-5 and passed the pistol to Nuzzi. As he was doing this, suddenly, gunfire cut through the air and Wilson went down in a screaming spray of blood and gore.

"Hostiles!" Cooper called out belatedly.

Blake snapped his MP-5 up and sprayed fire into a pair of men in white camo gear that came around the corner. At the same time, Cooper and Smith, who had both grabbed shotguns, added their own fire to the mix and the two enemy soldiers went down under a hail of lead. Blake's pulse was racing and he tossed a glance down at Smith. The man was dead, a bloody hole in his forehead. Dead, just like that, and nothing could ever be done about it.

Shaking his head, knowing they didn't have time for this, Blake fought through the mental and physical pain, leading his ragtag band of survivors along.

For the most part, the chaos of the base worked to their advantage. The armed security force that protected Gen Inc was far too busy trying to contain the outbreak of Thing beasts to deal with a couple of errant prisoners more often than not. Nuzzi led them along a series of interconnected corridors, through a few storage rooms and finally into an armory that was largely depleted from who knew how many others coming by.

The good news, however, was that there was enough to keep them going.

"Smash and grab!" Blake called.

He managed to find about a dozen magazines for his MP-5, another pistol for his hip holster and, lo and behold, a flamethrower! It was a rock solid model with a big, black muzzle that looked like it was just asking to light some malformed creatures up. He checked the fuel canister, found it full and pocketed another three canisters, as well as a pair of fragmentation grenades and two flame grenades. Feeling a hell of a lot better about his chances, he led the two Special Forces soldiers and Nuzzi back out into the chaos.

* * *

"Here, it's here," Nuzzi said suddenly.

Blake skidded to a halt, took a deep breath and wiped some sweat away from his forehead. Things hadn't exactly been going well. He'd been fighting through the complex, up several stories, for a solid half hour now. He'd lost his Special Forces allies in all the fighting and had a fair number of close calls. Cooper had ended up going down until a hail of fire from a squad of Gen Inc soldiers that managed to get the drop on them. Then Wilson had been impaled through the chest by a huge Walker that had lumbered out of an alcove and surprised them.

He'd gone through about half of the bullets and fuel he'd gained at the armory just keeping his ass alive as the base tore itself apart.

"Stay back," Blake said.

They'd come up to what Nuzzi identified as the top floor, into a maze of offices. Mercifully, they had been mostly empty, with only a few corpses for decorum. At the end of a long corridor, a large pair of doors awaited them.

Blake held his MP-5 up and ready as he approached the doors. This could be it, the final showdown. If he took out Graves, he'd strike a serious blow against Gen Inc. Blake reached the door, hesitated, then opened it up. When nothing immediately bad happened, he stepped inside and swept the area with his eyes and gun barrel. The large office was vacant.

"It's clear," Blake called after checking out any potential hiding places.

The walls were lined with filing cabinets, potted plants and pictures. A huge, polished wooden desk dominated the center of the room. Behind it was a series of floor-to-ceiling glass panes that showed the bleak, shrieking wastelands of Antarctica. Nuzzi came in and took a seat at the desk, booting up the computer.

"Let me see what I can find out," he murmured as he set to work.

Blake began looking over the desk. It was scattered with all manner of things: pens, pencils, folders, half-dead cigars, empty tumblers that smelled of booze, lots of office equipment, a pistol with some bullets scattered around it.

His eyes caught on something: a folder with big, bold red text stamped across it. Reaching out, he turned it so that he could read it. **OPERATION: BURN**. That didn't sound good. Blake opened it up and began reading through the report.

"Oh shit...we've got a problem," Blake said.

"Yes we do," Nuzzi whispered in growing horror. He jumped up out of his chair suddenly, knocking it to the floor. "Graves has wired this place to blow. We've barely got half an hour...we'll never survive on the surface, we need to get back down to the tunnels."

"But that's the problem," Blake said, holding up the folder. "He's had his men planting fire-bombs down there, all through the whole network of tunnels. They're going to burn out every living thing down there, including MacReady's operation."

"Then we have to hurry," Nuzzi said.

"Wait...can we warn everyone in the building?" Blake asked.

Sighing, Nuzzi moved back to the terminal, typed in a few commands and then straightened up. Overhead, a speaker crackled to life.

" _Warning. Emergency charges armed. Occupants have...twenty nine minutes to evacuate the premises before detonation,"_ a female voice warned.

"That should do it, now let's get the fuck out of here," Nuzzi said.

Blake concurred as he readied his MP-5. This time, they managed to locate and unlock a stairwell not far from Graves' office with a keycard Nuzzi had located in one of the desk drawers. It cut down on their travel time considerably. By the time they managed to return to the ground floor, just five minutes had passed.

Stepping out of the stairwell, Blake cursed and ducked, shoving Nuzzi back, as someone opened fire on him and bullets whizzed by. One of them passed close enough to his face that he could feel the heat and displaced air. Feeling the press of time, he shouldered his SMG and spit out a few well-placed bursts, gunning down a pair of men in white camo gear who were trying to stop him. He waited a few seconds and, when no one else came to investigate, beckoned Nuzzi on.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"This way," the scientist replied, turning left in the broad corridor they'd come to and heading off. Blake hurried to catch up with him.

As much as the stairwell shaved a lot of time off their descent, they kept running into hostiles, though more often than not it was Thing creatures. Blake had to wear them down with gunfire and then hose their malformed, decaying bodies with fire. He wasted precious seconds stripping any corpses he could find of fuel and ammo, and by the time they reached the very lift that Blake had been captured in, less than five minutes remained.

"You sure this is a good idea? This is where they gassed me," Blake said, hovering uncertainly outside the entrance to the lift.

"Yes," Nuzzi said, exasperated and nervous, "there's no one left to gas us, now let's _go!_ "

Reluctantly, Blake joined the scientist on the lift. Nuzzi pressed the down button and the lift began to descend. Long seconds ticked by. Blake could feel the sweat standing out of on his skin, could feel his heart hammering in his chest, his nerves screaming in his body. The lift continued to descend. Blake had questions for Nuzzi, but couldn't bring himself to ask them. If they didn't make it out of here, it wouldn't really matter anyway.

The elevator stopped abruptly just as the voice on the intercom informed them that they had only two minutes left.

"We need to get clear of the blast zone," Blake said, switching to his flamethrower. In the intervening time since the office, Nuzzi had armed himself with an MP-5. The two hurried into the open area beyond. It looked like the Walkers he'd been chased by earlier had wandered off. He began to head back the way he'd come, but Nuzzi called him in the other direction.

"What's over there?" Blake asked.

"A tram, it can take us much of the distance, I hope," Nuzzi replied, heading off.

Sighing, Blake hurried after him. They descended into another maze of debris. "I don't know if you've noticed, but most of this place is clogged with crap like this."

"No, the tram is a special cargo line, built inside the inner wall, its own separate tunnel. It's much more likely to be intact, and even if it can't take us the whole way there, there's at least a good chance that it can shave a fair portion of time off our trip."

"Fine," Blake replied, feeling the tension mount.

They moved through the disorienting proliferation of debris as quickly as they could. Blake tried to keep track of how much time they had left but was too worried and too busy looking for enemies to do so with any accuracy.

Abruptly, they came up against a wall.

"Here!" Nuzzi said.

Blake spotted a door and the pair of them quickly opened it, move through and shut it firmly behind them.

Right before the blast erupted, Blake wondered idly if the bombs in the biological research facility would also trigger the bombs that had been set for Project: Burn.

A shockwave ripped through the area. The corridor they were in trembled and shook, the lights flickered, dimmed, died and then came back on as the shaking grew worse. It drove columns of dust from the ceiling. Somewhere nearby, a pipe burst, releasing a wave of steam into the air. Then, suddenly, all was still.

"We made it," Blake murmured after a few seconds.

"So far," Nuzzi replied. "Come on, we still have a lot to do."

They set off.


	11. Chapter 11: Countdown

They set off into the network of dimly-lit tunnels and connecting chambers as the dust settled from the tremendous explosion overhead.

Blake was beginning to feel like he was running on autopilot. He had no sense of time, no concept of what might be happening in the world around him. For all he knew, everyone back at headquarters might be dead or infected. For all he knew, _Graves_ might be dead. As he walked down a narrow alcove of concrete with Nuzzi, he felt like the two of them might very well be the last two human beings in the entirety of everything.

He fought to shake off this feeling of isolation. It was dangerous on a battlefield, and this particular battlefield was unlike any other he had encountered before a few days ago. He stuck to the basics: check your corners, trust your instincts and be ready to open fire at the drop of a hat. Nuzzi was silent behind him as they stepped out of a narrow passageway, into a transitional room with five other doorways, all leading into tunnels that snaked away from them.

"Where to next?" Blake asked.

"Continue ahead, we're not far," Nuzzi replied.

"So...how'd you get involved in this?" Blake asked as they plunged into another poorly-lit corridor, moving ever closer to their destination.

Nuzzi sighed. "I was working for Genetic Incorporated Italy," he replied. "I'm top in my field...or so I'd like to believe, honestly. Gen Inc scouted me about a decade ago and I've worked on a number of projects since then. When word came down of a potential breakthrough in Antarctica, I have to admit, I was deeply intrigued. Especially with all the secrecy surrounding it and the sheer amount of money they offered me to drop everything and come down here."

"When was that, exactly?" Blake asked.

"About a month ago. They'd received word that some kind of alien craft had been discovered. It was all very compartmentalized, so I didn't know too much, but I managed to piece some things together. Like, we had cut a deal with the US Government. I just thought they were offering protection...I had no idea you poor bastards were essentially lured down here to stir up some trouble and then be captured for test subjects. When I first got here, I was placed at a weather station, then transferred to a submersible. I worked with a man named Faraday and we had quite the time determining the nature of the entity."

"I was there and I met Faraday. I think Whitley shot and killed him," Blake murmured.

"Hmm. A most unfortunate end."

"What have you learned about...what did you call it? The Cloud Virus? Is this thing actually alive or is it just an animal?"

"Well...those are good questions. We're not sure. We're not even sure what happens when someone is taken over by the infection. I believe that one of a few things happen. The first, and in my opinion, the most likely, is that the infection either slowly but surely takes over a person from within or, if it has the time, consumes the whole host and replaces it with a perfect, infection-controlled copy, and then the person who has been infected no longer exists. They are dead, and what we are interacting with is an alien entity that merely _looks_ human. It walks, talks and sounds like a human, but it is merely a chameleon.

"Another possibility: the infection hides inside the human host without revealing itself, so that the human does not know it is infected until, suddenly, when it is threatened, the infection suddenly takes control and shoves the host's consciousness aside, taking control of the body. A third possibility is that a person knows they are infected...and tries to hide it, hoping that they can somehow fight it off. And, of course, there's no certainty. It could be a roll of the dice, all three of these things could happen, or perhaps there's some fourth option I haven't considered."

"I remember a comrade of mine got infected. He...he asked me to kill him, he said he could feel the infection. And then there was Whitley, who obviously was infected, but claimed he could somehow control it. Although I don't know if maybe the infection was letting him think that, or if it was just the infection talking, pretending to be Whitley..."

"Interesting," Nuzzi murmured. "We were working on some kind of vaccine or possibly even a cure but...I have to admit, I'm not sure it's possible. This entity is so complex, so ingenious...we could study it for a hundred years and possibly not have an answer."

"Any theories on where it came from? I mean, besides outer space."

"I'm not sure. There are a few possibilities. It could have stowed away on that ship, or it could have been in control of that ship. Though, given the photographs recovered from Dronning Maud of the creature dug up out of the ice, and given that it resembled the creatures we've encountered in their 'burst out' form, I believe something went wrong and the creature was forced to defend itself. Either it brought the ship down, or perhaps the crew brought the ship down, or...maybe they simply had some kind of mechanical problem. I never got to see the interior, unfortunately."

"I have another question. Is it one entity or many?"

"Personally...I'm not sure. It could go one way or another. It could be some kind of hive-mind, one intelligence remotely controlling all of the various entities through some kind of telepathy. Or each could be its own, individual animal. Then there's your other question...is it alive? I'm afraid I can't answer that, either. Personally, I think it's too perfect not to have been engineered, maybe by the aliens who flew the craft, maybe by others. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's not alive. I believe it would be technically possible to create life, to create sentient, self-aware beings.

"Then again, it may just be some highly-adaptive virus that simply mimics sentience, but is in fact operating on pre-programmed instincts or instructions. Like an illness, a virus or a disease. In that scenario it isn't alive, but clearly it's very adept at multiplying itself."

"Jeez," Blake muttered, "I feel like I know less _now_ than before I started asking questions."

"Yes...I'm afraid we've stumbled into an _extremely_ complicated situation. The only good news is that there doesn't necessarily seem to be a moral dilemma: either we kill these entities or they consume and effectively kill us."

"Now there's a bottom line I can understand," Blake replied.

"Ah...here we are."

They came through a doorway into a much larger, open area. It reminded Blake of a subway station. They'd emerged at the back of a large, open platform dotted with abandoned supply crates. Dead ahead was a flat-car tram with a cubicle at the front resting on some tracks that extended away in either direction into the darkness.

"We're in luck," Nuzzi said.

"Yeah, let's hurry the hell up," Blake replied.

Even as they began making for the tram, they were attacked from several angles. From the shadows to their left and right, a trio of humanoid Walkers, a dozen Scuttlers and Blake's awful old friend the Bulldog Walker came charging out.

"Shit! Open fire!" Blake snapped. "Hit the Scuttlers and stay back!"

Nuzzi responded with gunfire, blasting a pair of Scuttlers off their feet in sprays of black gore. Blake charged forward, switching to his flamethrower, and brought the cone of red-orange flames sweeping across the Bulldog Walker and one of the humanoid Walkers, a hideous thing with milky-white skin, no face and a huge crimson claw with a serrated edge. Both of them lit up like torches and began coming for him faster. Blake dove out of the way and came up with his MP-5. He sprayed a quartet of Scuttlers that were coming at him, put them down and then ducked, crying out, narrowly avoiding a fifth Scuttler that had leaped for him.

He tracked it and put it down, then did a quick survey of the scene and dove out of the way again as the Bulldog Walker, still aflame, charged him. Raising his MP-5, he emptied the rest of the magazine into the big, burly thing and finally put it down. The second Walker had gone down on its own. The other two had split up.

"Uh, Blake!" Nuzzi called. "A little help!"

One Walker was coming for Nuzzi, the other for Blake. Cursing, his heart hammering in his chest, Blake lit his Walker up and then sprinted towards the other. Nuzzi had finished off the Scuttlers and now was pouring fire into the hideously malformed thing advancing on him. It was one of the ones that had a human torso for a tail, dragging the silently screaming half-man across the floor. Blake raced forward and used up the last of the fuel in his canister to hose the awful beast down. It turned towards him and took a swipe.

Blake leaped back...almost into the waiting arms of the other aflame Walker. Cursing, he backed away from both of them. They were both advancing on him now, as he had earned their ire. Switching to his MP-5, he slammed a fresh magazine home and went through every last round in it putting down the pair of Walkers.

As they fell, so did the silence, descending across the area like a heavy, invisible gas, broken only by the crackling of the flames.

"Well, damn," Nuzzi said. "That was intense."

"Yeah," Blake replied, getting his breath back. "Now let's get out of here."

They made their way across the platform, but as they approached the tram, something caught his eye. A black case abandoned on the floor, burst open, supplies scattered. Survival gear, it looked like. All kinds of survival gear. Blake crouched, grabbed more ammo for his MP-5, a canister of fuel, quickly reloaded both of his guns and then snagged the pair of test kits he'd spied still in the case. He stood and turned, holding them.

"Time for a test, doc," he said.

Nuzzi frowned, staring at the tests kits, then sighed and nodded. "Fair enough."

Blake went first, sticking the needle in his arm and drawing some of his blood, then holding it up. He waited, his pulse rising again, thinking about what Nuzzi had said. What if he was infected but he didn't know it?

A long moment went by and…

Nothing. There was nothing. He sighed softly and tossed the kit into the darkness, hearing it shatter somewhere. He then carefully passed the next kit to Nuzzi and took a few steps back, covering him with the flamethrower. Blake watched intently as the white-haired doctor stuck himself in the arm, winced and drew the blood. Moment of truth...Nuzzi held the test kit up, staring at it intently. A second passed, then another one, and a third...both of them sighed softly in relief. The kit was inert and silent. Nuzzi was human.

"Let's go," Blake said, heading for the tram.

The pair of them got onboard and Nuzzi stepped into the conductor's cubicle, fired up the tram and launched them into the darkness.

* * *

Nuzzi was right: the tram took them almost the whole way there. They ran into a partially collapsed tunnel not far from HQ. While they'd made their way through the darkened tunnels, Blake had grilled Nuzzi for information on Gen Inc's operation down here. Besides the biological research facility, there was a large prison complex, a medical complex, a support station and, perhaps most importantly, an airfield, which was supposed to serve as backup headquarters if the biological research complex ever fell.

Which made it their number one target.

Once they were forced off of the tram, Blake led Nuzzi through a series of tunnels and corridors before finally emerging back out in the main tunnel. He still had no idea how close the soldiers were to initiating Operation: Burn. It could be a whole day away or they might have mere minutes left before the bombs went off and turned the whole underground into a living hell. Not knowing was starting to drive him crazy.

"We aren't too far away now," Blake said as they wandered back into familiar territory. This wasn't all that far away from the area where he'd first surfaced to help Chase.

"Good, we need to act fast. I imagine that our stunt put Graves on the defensive and I know he had several irons in the fire, none of them good. What we did probably made him push up whatever timetable he was working," Nuzzi replied.

"Great," Blake muttered.

He froze as he heard something up ahead, what sounded like talking. Nuzzi froze with him. They listened intently. Blake tried to sort it out, determining whether or not they were allies or enemies. What eventually sold him on the idea was the manner in which they were speaking. Their voices were too...flat, too dead, too cold and detached. It wasn't definitive, but it was enough to inspire more than a little caution on his part.

"Stay here," he whispered, then began to creep forward.

Nuzzi stayed put, though he didn't look happy about it. Blake didn't blame him. Working his way through the ugly maze of wreckage and derelict supply crates and vehicles, Blake crept ever closer to the mysterious voices. They grew louder and sounded impatient. He quietly made sure his MP-5 was ready and kept going until he managed to find a narrow space where two large metal crates almost, but not quite, met, giving him a view of the open area beyond. A quartet of men in white camo gear and gasmasks were standing guard while a fifth one crouched against the wall. They were complaining, wanting to get out of there.

Blake listened to them for a little bit, seeing if he could pick up any intel from them, but they weren't really saying much. They all seemed jumpy. He came very, very close to rolling a grenade into their midst. It would be easy enough, but...something made him stop. His instincts told him not to and, well, he'd gotten this far listening to his combat instincts, so instead he worked his way back out. Part of him wanted to just open fire from the slot, but he figured it would be too easy to lose track of the hostiles if they got away, which almost certainly at least some of them would, and then were would he end up?

Trapped in a maze with hostiles.

So, he worked his way back around to a larger opening, dropped to one knee and aimed carefully around the smashed engine of a troop transport flatbed. He waited a few seconds, making sure none of them were preparing to leave, then he opened fire and sprayed their position with red hot lead. As it turned out, he had nothing to worry about. All five of them went down under his deadly rain of bullets, taking an entire magazine to go down. When it was over, he hastily reloaded and listened, waiting to see if backup would arrive.

After about twenty seconds, he quickly returned through the maze, retrieved Nuzzi and then brought him back to the open area.

"Check them for ammo and supplies," Blake said as he approached the area where the fifth trooper had been crouched.

Nuzzi grunted a response and got to it. As Blake closed in on that particular section of wall, he felt a cold stone settle into his gut. There was a square, black device at the base of the wall. On top of it was a screen with numbers in dangerous crimson numerals.

A bomb.

"Oh fuck," he muttered.

"What?" Nuzzi replied, straightening up and jogging over to join him. "Oh...fuck, indeed," he murmured.

The screen gave them about ten minutes. Nuzzi glanced at his wrist, muttered to himself and then hit Blake's shoulder. "Let's move, I've got a watch, I can keep track."

"Run," Blake replied.

They started running.

They navigated a series of tight alcoves, burned wreckage and derelict vehicles. Around them, the tunnel was alive with dark, alien life. Thing beasts growled, lurking in the shadows, but Blake didn't have time for them. Five minutes later, he and Nuzzi were hammering on the door that led to the underground headquarters.

A few seconds later, the door was yanked open and two MP-5s and a flamethrower were pointed out. MacReady, North and a man Blake didn't recognize were on the other ends of those weapons. "Blake!" MacReady cried, lowering his weapon some. "We thought you were dead."

"No time to explain, bombs in the tunnels, have to get everyone out," Blake replied, panting.

"Shit, test them," MacReady replied. The men backed up and Blake and Nuzzi were cautiously let in. North closed the door behind them while the other man produced a pair of test kits. Both Blake and Nuzzi were covered with the weapons while they hastily tested themselves. Once they'd proven their humanity, MacReady stepped forward.

"How much time?" he asked.

Nuzzi glanced at his watch. "Four minutes," he replied.

"Fuck!" MacReady snapped. "Grab whatever you can and get topside, warn the others." He looked back at Blake. "How big is this bomb?"

"Bombs," Blake corrected. "Everywhere underground. The whole tunnel."

"Crap, all right, get up and out and get to Rothera Station!" MacReady called.

The next several minutes were a confused, incoherent mess as Blake helped the men gather whatever guns, ammo and supplies he could. After he loaded himself down, he joined them in climbing up and out of the subterranean base. They emerged in the abandoned base on the surface, where even more men were evacuating.

"This base isn't very secure, I'm not sure it'll survive, but that Way Station you found Chase in, we cut that off from the underground, reinforced it. It should survive the blast. I've been moving men and supplies there for a while now...what the fuck happened to you?" MacReady asked as they moved along with the evacuation.

"Long story, tell you when there's time," Blake replied.

MacReady nodded tightly. They burst outside, into a haze of snow. Blake joined several other men by getting into a tractor with Nuzzi. MacReady got behind the wheel, started the engine and took off, pushing the tractor as fast as it could go.

They'd made it perhaps a hundred feet when the ground began to shake.

* * *

Blake zipped up his brand new coat and took a moment to study himself in the mirror.

He looked like hell, felt like it, too, but he'd had another break, albeit a short one. MacReady told him he'd been missing for about twelve hours now, and in that half-day time frame, the man hadn't been lollygagging around. Using the men Blake had rescued, as well as a handful of others he'd rescued from abandoned outposts, either the remnants of the Special Forces teams Whitley had called down or runaways from Gen Inc, he'd cobbled together quite a little guerrilla force. Taking the initiative, they'd hit the prison complex and tripled their numbers, turning the little little movement into practically a standing army.

After that, MacReady had been coordinating hit and run movements on all of Gen Inc's buildings, gathering men, weapons and vehicles wherever he could. Blake had to admit, he was genuinely impressed.

Then again, they were motivated.

After getting to what MacReady had dubbed Rothera Station, ensuring the base had survived the blast and going through a mass testing, Blake had taken a much needed break. He'd gotten his wounds tended to by Weldon, scarfed down a big meal and then had taken a long, hot shower. Now he was just finishing dressing.

It was time to end this.

Blake left the bathroom and stepped out into a corridor on the second floor of Rothera Station. The place was abuzz with activity. He had to admit...it made him nervous. They made it a point to test every hour on the hour now, which slowed down productivity, but...well, what else could they do? Even so, Blake couldn't help but wonder if any of these men he shared this base with were infected. He was at least glad to see that everyone respected the threat: no one strayed too close to each other. All it would take is one touch and then that could be the end.

He moved through the base, navigating the hallways until he arrived at what MacReady referred to as the War Room, which had once been the foreman's office. They'd cleared most of it out, set up a communications center in one corner, shoved a couple of desks against the left wall and, along the far back wall, erected a huge map of the area that was constantly being updated by hand as new information came in.

MacReady and Nuzzi were there, so were several others. They stood before the map, listening to Nuzzi talk. They didn't look happy.

"Blake," MacReady said as he stepped up to the map. "We've got a problem."

"What else is new?" Blake muttered in response. "What's the situation?"

"This is where we're at: we've got Gen Inc and Graves on the run. This airfield is their last refuge. Based on comms traffic, we know a few things. The first is that they've cut off communications with the rest of the world for anyone on this continent that isn't Gen Inc. If we want to warn everyone else and enact a quarantine around Antarctica, we've got to take them down. The second is that they've called in a contingent of troops for backup and they're going to be here in about twelve hours. The third and final bit of news, which is good and bad, is that as far as we've been able to tell, no one and nothing has left this continent, at least not from Gen Inc. The bad news is that they're preparing to fly a huge shipment of Thing creatures back to the States."

"So we're attacking the airfield then?" Blake asked.

"Yes. This is going to be our last gambit, because if we don't take that airfield and get the word out, then I imagine that when that backup gets here, we're going to be first on their kill list. I'm going to be leading the main assault force and we're going to be hitting them dead on. Blake, you're going to take a team and hit a SAM site, take it over and use that surface-to-air missile to take down the plane. There's going to be a few other teams hitting the airfield from several different directions. Unfortunately, due to the state of the underground tunnels, we can't use the 'come up from below' trick anymore. This is an all-out surface war. It's an all-in kind of situation."

"Got it," Blake replied, studying the map.

"Select your equipment and your team, then prepare to mount up. We leave in twenty minutes," MacReady said.


	12. Chapter 12: Endgame

Blake revved the snowmobile and shot across the snow and ice. For once, the snowstorm was finally clearing up.

He took it as a good omen.

Which was nice, considering how shitty everything else had gone lately. Around him, four other snowmobiles raced across the dangerous terrain of the south pole. He'd handpicked his team: North, Davis and two more men he hadn't met but seem liked solid individuals. A huge man who had to be six foot six that had roughly the same build as a soda machine. He was a weapons expert in the Special Forces and bore the name Boyle. The final man was almost Boyle's opposite: average height, made of lean, wiry muscle, he was an engineer named Tennet. The man had eyes of frozen steel and the credentials to go with it.

This was his team.

The pressure was on and the final showdown was upon them. Blake let his mind clear, let all other thoughts, worries, fears and concerns fall away but the mission before him. Take the SAM site, shoot down the plane. That was his entire world right now. Wind tore past his face and his whole body jolted as the snowmobile hit a hump in the landscape and slammed back into ground. Judging by his rough calculations, he should be about thirty seconds out from the SAM site. All they had to was swoop in and hit it hard-

Gunfire from above ripped through the snow in front of him. A round punched through the nose of his snowmobile, shredding the engine and sending the vehicle wildly off course. Blake screamed as he was thrown free of the vehicle, hit the ground and skidded to a painful stop. He lurched to his feet, stumbling as he heard helicopter blades churning overhead. Where the hell had it come from?! Growing, he prepped his MP-5.

"Keep going!" he screamed at the four other vehicles. "Don't stop!"

He could see the SAM site in the distance. To their credit, they kept going. Blake turned and raised his MP-5, hoping to somehow deal with this new threat. The chopper hovered a good fifty feet above him like a black metal wasp. He could see the barrel of a chaingun sticking out the side, tracking him. Cursing, he aimed and opened fire while strafing. Gunfire chewed up the snow as the chaingun opened up again.

His own bullets pinged off the hull...and seemed not to hit anything important. Cursing, Blake ran through any ideas he might have to get his ass out of this alive. The chopper was lowering, the gunner twisting the chaingun back his way as he continued to dodge and twist and run. As it got even closer, eager for the kill, an idea suddenly crashed into Blake's head. Acting fast, before the advantage he had was lost, he pulled out a fragmentation grenade, yanked the pin out with his teeth and hurled it as hard as he could towards the chopper.

The frag sailed through the air…

…directly through the open side door the chaingun hung out of.

The chopper suddenly jerked up, then right, then back as the gunfire cut off abruptly. Mere seconds later, the whole thing disappeared into a brilliant orange-red fireball. Blake narrowly avoided the hail of burning metal that rained down from above like so much deadly shrapnel. Regaining his feet, he turned his attention to the structure in the distance. Gunfire rattled from that direction, the sounds echoing back to him.

Somewhere else, even more distant, an explosion ruptured.

MacReady's teams hard at work.

Hurrying on, Blake fully intended to do his own part of the job.

* * *

By the time he kicked his way through the snow and got there, the job was pretty much done. He called out a warning of his approach as he entered through a side door that was still open, a dead man in white camo gear half in, half out of the doorway. Stepping over the corpse, he came into a corridor, followed it to its end, passed through a security checkpoint and ran into North at the edge of the control room for the SAM.

"Thought you might've bought it," North said.

"Good to see you, too," Blake replied. "Where are we at?"

"Almost there."

Blake swept the room with his gaze. Davis and Boyle were standing guard elsewhere in the room and Tennet was in front of a large control station, working a keyboard with intense concentration. A huge screen dominated the front of the room, taking up most of the wall it was set up on. It showed an exterior view and was slowly dragging towards an airplane that was beginning to take off. A long moment of tension passed by.

The plane left the runway, a huge, white object rising into the air.

Abruptly, a tremendous roar sounded, shook the structure and then a brilliant orange glare raced by the screen and, within two seconds, connected with the plane. It disappeared into a brilliant white flare of pure fire and twisted metal debris.

"It's down," Tennet reported needlessly.

" _I caught that one from way over here,"_ MacReady said over the radio. _"Get your asses over here while the getting's good, we're fighting our way into the main structure. Over."_

"Affirmative, we're on our way. Out," Blake replied.

"Captain," Tennet called, "something you should see."

Blake hurried through the control room to join the man at the console he was working. He'd called up schematics of the building they were in and the surrounding area.

"What?" he asked.

"There's a tunnel," Tennet replied, pointing. "Starts here, leads to the main complex and control tower. It was separate from the main underground tunnels that were compromised by the explosions. It should be intact. We could launch a surprise attack."

"Good work, keep it off the radio. Let's go."

The squad finished gathering spare ammo from the corpses they'd produced taking the SAM site and headed for the exit.

* * *

The tunnel was empty.

Blake led the troops down it, MP-5 in hand, fresh magazine in it. He felt calm, cool and ready to eliminate Graves. Murder was something he'd had to accept, something he'd had to at least partially get 'used to' over the years. It was ugly and it would never stop being ugly, but, unfortunately, the darker part of him believed that it would never stop being necessary. There were too many fucking assholes out there that were all too willing to do unacceptable things in the pursuit of increasing their own power.

Blake liked to think that the men he'd killed over the past decade were all evil, that he was ridding the world of bad seeds...but he knew it wasn't true. Some of them were just poor idiots coerced or suckered into some asshole's militia or terrorist organization. Maybe even a lot of them. Hell, how many of the mercs down here working for Gen Inc didn't even know what the hell he was going on? They were just guys with guns fighting for money.

But the hard truth remained.

This _had_ to be done. There was no alternative. Graves had to be taken down, and anyone in Blake's or MacReady's or their men's way had to be taken down too. For once, at least, Blake knew, unequivocally, that he was fighting for a good cause.

Either he and MacReady won, or humanity was taken over by this alien virus.

Even then, it might not be such a sure thing. But he'd worry about that later, after they took down Graves, exposed Gen Inc and put this continent on lockdown. The tunnel trembled and the lights flickered as something exploded overhead. Blake ignored it, jogging on. He could see the corresponding exit not far ahead of him. Behind him, his soldiers were locked, loaded and ready for action.

Blake hit the door, paused and listened, didn't hear anything on the other side and moved through. It led to a stairwell that folded back in on itself a few times, leading up to the control complex. They pounded up the stairs in silence, hit the next door and opened it up. Outside was a metal antechamber with several exits and corridors snaking away from them. The way was clear, though they could hear all manner of combat around them. Explosions, gunfire, screaming, hysterically shouted orders and, just to keep things from getting boring, the shrieking, howling, moaning and roaring of Thing creatures. Of course. What else?

"Let's move," Blake said, "we need to link up with the others."

They moved through the base, jogging down a couple of corridors before they became mixed up in the next battle. They were attempting to cut through a large mess hall but instead found themselves caught between two warring factions of Gen Incs' soldiers and a wave of Thing beasts. Blake had the men stay back for a moment, letting both parties whittle each other down. It didn't take long, however, as a door behind the Gen Inc mercs burst open and a fresh trio of Walkers raced into the room and began ripping into them.

"Shit," Blake mutter, "take them down!"

He'd made sure that everyone had been armed with both a lead-based weapon and a flame-based weapon. A hail of bullets cut through the air as the five men opened fire, slamming into the eight remaining Walkers and spraying the area with black gore. Blake quickly pulled out a pair of flame grenades, yanked out the pins and threw them in quick succession towards the thickest clusters of Walkers and Scuttlers.

The first one was a solid hit, going up in flames and torching three of the Walkers and about a half dozen Scuttlers. The second one was lobbed too far and only caught one of the bastards on fire. Still, half of them were down. The mess hall was full of roaring, screaming chaos now as the men split up, trying to take down the remaining Walkers. One of them was coming right at Blake. He poured fire into it, backing up quickly, then switched to his flamethrower and lit the ugly thing up. As he was trying to keep out of its way, he heard someone scream.

Snapping his gaze over, he saw that one of the larger beasts had bull-rushed Boyle and impaled him through the stomach. It lifted him up and over its head, draping itself in his intestines, then hurled his body across the room. Blake cried out in shock and horror and shifted his flamethrower. He squeezed the trigger and sent a jet of fire spraying onto the creature, catching it aflame instantly. It began wailing in an awful, earsplitting voice and started stomping towards him. Blake switched to his MP-5 and emptied the magazine into it, backpedaling, trying to get out of its long grasp, fearful that he would end up like Boyle.

Suddenly, North was at his side, pouring gunfire into the creature. Finally, after what seemed like ages, the beast collapsed with a resounding crash. All fell silent in the mess hall. Blake quickly canvased the room as he slapped a fresh magazine into the MP-5. The others were still alive and they'd dealt with the rest of the Thing beasts.

"Let's move," he said, leading them across the room, towards the far exit.

* * *

It took twenty minutes, but Blake and his team met up with MacReady and a handful of others at the base of an elevator shaft, sealed up tight.

Blake, high on adrenaline, stared at the large, polished silver doors.

"Locked down tight," Peltola said, crouching at the control panel next to the lift. "And as far as I've been able to tell based on intel I've gathered and comm chatter, Graves is as the top of this shaft. But...I think I can fix this."

"Do it. Get the lift open so we can crawl up through the top and climb the shaft. There's no way we're getting in that elevator," MacReady said.

"Got it."

"How'd you do?" MacReady asked, turning to face Blake.

"Okay, I guess. Lost Boyle and Davis in the fighting," he replied grimly. "But we managed to clear the west side of the complex."

"We've lost too many," MacReady muttered. He sighed, shook his head and rubbed his eyes. "I'm coordinating with the strike teams over the radio. We've cleared the outlying buildings and control the hangars. There are no more planes taking off today. We're still clearing the complex but it looks like we've gotten most of the forces. Obviously they had an outbreak here already, which depleted and divided their troops."

"Got it!" Peltola said, standing as the elevator doors slid open, revealing an empty elevator. MacReady stepped inside and, with Blake's help, got a panel in the ceiling undone, revealing access to the elevator shaft above.

"Blake, you, Tennet and North are coming with me. We're going up there and taking this bastard down. Peltola, keep watch here and continue monitoring the situation."

"Got it," Peltola said.

The four men climbed up through the hole, found a pair of ladders bolted to the walls and began climbing. They ascended in silence, focusing intently. They were close now. So close to putting this to an end, wresting control of the continent away from Gen Inc. Blake was leading the way up one ladder, MacReady behind him, while North led the way up the second ladder, Tennet behind him. As they reached the top, MacReady said, "here."

Blake glanced down and saw the man held up a flash-bang. He nodded and accepted it. It made the most sense to use.

"Tennet, get the doors," MacReady said quietly.

Blake prepared to throw the grenade. They were all at the top of the shaft now, facing the pair of closed doors. Suddenly, the doors open. Blake ripped out the pin and, hanging off the ladder, threw it before the doors even finished opening. There was a startled shout, then a tremendous bang and a brilliant flash.

"Go!" Blake called. He and North leaped in through the open door and each covered a side of the room. It was very similar to the office he and Nuzzi had raided back at the complex. Graves was completely alone in there, stumbling around, a pistol in hand, his other arm thrown over his eyes, groaning sickly.

Blake hurried forward, smacked the pistol out of the man's hand with his gun, (breaking at least one or two fingers in the process) and then planting a foot on his chest and kicking him hard against the metal floor.

"Give it up, Graves, it's over," MacReady said.

"You bastards," he growled. "You fucked it all up. I had it under control and you fucked everything up. Now it's all ruined."

Blake laughed grimly. "You 'had it under control'? Are you kidding me? Even before we started our assault way back when, those tunnels of yours were totally overrun with creatures. You obviously didn't have shit under control."

"The Cloud Virus is powerful, genius and volatile but _we were taking control of it!_ Do you have any idea the ramifications, the possibilities?! This could launch our understanding of biology, of genetics, of life itself into the next century! Imagine the diseases we could cure. Cancer! We could cure cancer with this fucking thing!"

"Oh, give it up, Graves," Blake growled. "It was a power play. You saw all the potential patents, the sheer power of this thing, and saw nothing but dollar signs. But it doesn't matter. You're finished, it's over."

"Over for you," Graves growled.

He moved then, _fast_. He had another pistol in his back-draw. Blake had let his MP-5 droop slightly but snapped it up as Graves got the pistol up.

They both fired at the same moment.

While Blake felt an explosion of pain cutting through his neck, he saw a hole open up on Graves' forehead.

Grunting, Blake fell to the floor. He heard shouting, saw MacReady and North standing over him, felt pressure against his neck, but he was going out now. He felt faraway, and content. At peace, almost. Graves was dead.

That's what had mattered.

Darkness consumed him.


	13. Epilogue: The Long Haul

Blake looked out over the vast antarctic wastelands surrounding his facility, hands behind his back, staring out of the windows of what had once been Graves' office.

 _His_ facility. He was still getting used to that.

Okay, well, not _all_ his facility. He shared it with MacReady for the moment.

It had been two weeks since Graves had shot and nearly killed him in this very office. He'd woken up two days later in the airfield's infirmary. Weldon had been there. The first thing he wanted was a test, both for himself and for Weldon. The medic had been kind enough to oblige him. MacReady had come to see him shortly after, (and had submitted to a test of his own), and explained that they were in control of the airfield and were currently working with several different governments to enact a quarantine.

They'd contacted as many governments as they could at around the same time, so that no one tried to get into a power play and bumrush the continent to take control just like Gen Inc. Luckily, it seemed to be working. The United States, Norwegian, German, Russian, Japanese and Brazilian governments were currently working together to enact a full quarantine around the continent, and since then several governments had started getting in on it. After healing up enough to start walking around again, (which took another day or so,) he'd gotten up against Weldon's recommendations and had started helping the others get the base in shipshape.

Since he'd woken up, he'd been helping burn bodies, scrub away the blood and bring the airfield back up to code. And preparing it for the long task ahead. The governments were in agreement: Blake and MacReady were certified experts on the Cloud Virus, and they had been placed in charge of the makeshift army they'd built down there, with more experts to come down once the quarantine had been fully enacted.

The past two weeks had been easy, though.

Blake knew that the hard part was just beginning. Somehow, someway, they were going to have to sterilize the entire continent. It seemed like an...impossible task. It would take hundreds, probably thousands of men and all manner of surveying and scanning technology to sweep the whole thing over and over, looking for Thing creatures.

Yes, it was going to be a task that could take years...decades even.

A lifetime. Maybe even longer.

And Blake was looking forward to it. As insane as it was, as terrifying as it was, as hard as it was going to be...it gave him a sense of purpose. This was something he could do, something he actually felt (mostly) qualified to deal with. He knew he'd have to give up his life back home, but what life was that? He didn't have many friends, none outside the military actually, and not much family to speak of. It seemed like he'd been alone for ages, fighting for a cause that he didn't always believe in or even understand.

But now he a definitive purpose, and was serving with men who knew the stakes. Professionals who would get the job done, who would fight to the bitter end.

Behind him, the elevator dinged open.

"See anything interesting?" MacReady asked, moving across the room to join him.

He kept a little farther away than arm's length. They would all be doing that from now on, all subtly paranoid of each other.

It was the only sane way to live down here.

"I suppose I'm just getting myself used to it," he replied.

"Yeah, I know what you mean..." He descended into silence for a moment. "Well, if you feel up to it, Delta Team is prepping to head out to Outpost Thirty One to scrub it and search for supplies. You feel like going back?"

"Where it all started...for us anyway," Blake murmured. He took a deep breath and let it out. "Yeah, I'm up for it."

"Good. Alpha Team is already at Dronning Maud and Bravo and Charlie are at the Weather Station, retaking control of it. It's in good enough shape that we think we can re-purpose it to serve as a support station," MacReady said, turning and heading back towards the elevator. Blake followed after him, listening, nodding.

It was time to get to work.


End file.
